THE ADIRONDACKS 

T.MORRiS LONGSTRETH 






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Photo by Chester D. Moses X- 



AvALANcnK Pass 



THE ADIRONDACKS 






BY 



TyMORRIS LONGSTRETH 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 

PHOTOGRAPHS AND 

MAPS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1917 



FT27 
./12L-2 



Copyright, 1917, by 
The CENTtJBY Co. 



Published, October, 1917 



/ 



OCT "3 1917 






DEDICATED, WITH AFFECTION 
TO 

THOMAS K. BROWN 

OUR ONE-TIME MASTER, 
OUR OFT-TIME COUNSELOR. 
OUR ALL-TIME FRIEND. 
Lynn. 

Morris. 



FOEEWORD 

It had been raining for almost ten days, and 
we were getting short of small-talk, when Lynn 
made his suggestion. 

''Let 's look ahead," he said. "We Ve remem- 
bered the sugar and the lantern and the dish- 
towel, but we 've left out the most important thing 
of all." 

"Not matches," I said, "and there 's lots of 
punky dope left. What do you mean ? ' ' 

"This trip needs an underlying motive," he 
went on, "or it '11 peter out. It 's good enough 
fun fishing, and it 's good enough fun getting lost, 
but it 'd be a whole lot better if there was a 
reason for doing these things. I think I 've got 
one!" 

I paid more attention to the fire than I did to 
him, because he 's always gratifying his passion 
for making good things better, while I like to 
gratify mine for letting them alone. But he 
stopped spitting on the little whetstone with 
which he was putting a double-extra-fine edge on 
his ax and began again: 



vi FOREWORD 

^'Did you ever see a book on the Yellowstone 
Park?" 

''Dozens. Why?" 

''Well, this Park 's bigger, but did you ever see 
one about it?" 

I thought a moment, but couldn't remember 
having seen anything of the sort. 

"You haven't," he went on, "because there 
isn't such a thing. You can read whole book- 
shelves on the south pole, and Liege, and other 
places you can't visit, but there 's nothing about 
this Park as it is now, and I bet you, out of the 
forty million people who live around here — " 

"Oh, come now, forty million!" 

"Yes, forty million within a five-hundred-mile 
circle of this spot, and not forty thousand of them 
know that these forests and mountains and fish 
and things we 're enjoying for nothing are here 
for them to enjoy also for nothing." 

' ' Are n 't you glad ? " I said. ' ' It would be aw- 
fully crowded, for they would all come if they 
knew. But I don't see how that supplies our trip 
with an ulterior motive?" 

"We '11 write a book," he exclaimed. "I '11 
study the map and chop the wood, and all you '11 
have to do is to put down the necessary words. 
It '11 make us do the country thoroughly." 

I rebelled, but in vain. 



FOREWORD vii 

For the next two days it rained steadily, and 
we kept to camp. Lynn's idea germinated, and, 
like the Arab's camel, took possession of the tent. 
We planned out a tour that left no stone unde- 
scribed. 

It proved a rainbow summer, but the marvel 
of it was that, at the end, we should find a pot-o'- 
gold publisher. I suspect it was Lynn's thirst 
for thoroughness that did it. All along he kept 
insisting that the book should be more than a rec- 
ord of our wanderings, spacious though they were. 
He wished for an Adirondack Arkeology, a 
treatise that should treat generously of every 
topic from aborigine to zoo. No type of reader 
was to turn from its pages disappointed. 

My hope is more modest. I hope there may be 
some reader besides myself to turn from them 
at all. After the reality, they paint so palely the 
wilderness colors and breathe so thinly of the 
good wood-smells that Luggins himself never 
would take a second sniff. 

One word more, and the Park shall speak for 
itself. There are but two kinds of travelers; 
those who enjoy the road, and those who think 
they shall have enjoyment at the end of it. To 
the latter pass the time of day good-naturedly 
enough, but reserve the former for your company. 
And now, when I would come out from between 



viii FOREWORD 

the lines to speak of my friend, I cannot, for at 
any moment he may come to read over my shoul- 
der. This I can say, however. Luggins loves 
him, too, and I never met a horse, I here and now 
declare, who enjoys better sense. 

T. Morris Longstreth. 

Camp Fellows', 
July, 1917. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword v 

CHAPTER 

I An Aboriginal Approach 3 

II North Creek to Chimney Mountain . . 26 

III "We Travel North by South .... 46 

IV The Cedar River Country 64 

V The Adirondack Forest 80 

VI The Raquette River Trip 102 

VII Unconsidered Cranberry 143 

VIII Animals of the Adirondacks .... 173 

IX The Gospel According to Paul Smith . 208 

X Lake Placid and an Experiment in Intel- 
ligence 231 

XI The Giants Clothed with Stone . . . 258 

XII A Chapter op Ends and Odds .... 297 

XIII Winter Preferred 303 

XIV Weathering the Weather and the Fly . 318 
XV On Hermits and Other Tragedies . • .333 

XVI The Spirit of the Park 344 

XVII Duffle 352 

Index 367 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Avalanche Pass Frontispiece-^ 

FACING 
PAGE 

Southwest from Pharaoh Mountain 18 1^ 

Forest Cover: Brant Lake Country 35^ 

North from Pharaoh IMountain 54 " 

A Legal Lean-to for State Land 11^ 

An Adirondack Lumber Camp — 30° below . . .81' 

Pines of Saranac 96 

The Three Minute Tent 105 

Nameless Creek 116 '' 

Log Drive on the Raquette River 125 . 

The Long Lake Country 135' 

Road House of the Old Staging Days 146 ^ 

Indian Pass Brook: The Infant Hudson . . . 156 ^-^ 

Hanging Spear Falls of the Opalescent . . . .165 ^ 

South from the Summit of Indian Pass .... 176 

Midsummer Mildness 185 ^'' 

The First Reinforced Concrete 196 ^' 

Ausable Chasm 205 ^' 

The Peak of Mclntyre from Tahawus' Top . . . 216v^ 

Mt. Colvin and Sawtooth (right) from the Ausable 

Club /. . . 225^ 

The Ausable River 236 v 

Tahawus, Algonquin and Iroquois ; The Great Range 245 ' 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAOE 



Lower Ausable Lake 256 

Sawtooth from the Upper Ausable Lake .... 265 

Indian Pass from Lake Henderson 276 

Keene Valley from Keene Heights 285 

Crown of the Cloud-Cleaver 296 

The Original Winter Sport 305 

Whitefaee in November from Cobble Hill . . . 316 

A Home of the Old Wolf Days 325 

How Doth the Hermit 336 

The Spirit of the Park 345 

Map 44' 



THE ADIRONDACKS 



THE ADIRONDACKS 

CHAPTER I 

AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 

HERE and there among the epic groupings 
of scenery upon our planet one chances 
upon a little lyric landscape and ever afterward 
cherishes it. When one comes to consider the 
matter, it all at once seems strange that upon a 
surface as extensive and as varied as this, there 
should be so little domestic scenery, — if that be 
the term for what is neither wild nor common- 
place. 

Certain of the counties of England have just 
the proper cadence and color to recommend them 
to this class of countryside, but where else in lo- 
calities of equal extent can you find it? The truth 
is that nature abhors a vacuum only a little more 
violently than she eschews a happy medium. For 
the most part, her mountains are too high, her 
oceans too big, her plains too excessively plain. 

In our own country there is such an example 
of natural extravagance that there might be found 



4 THE ADIRONDACKS 

in the lay of the land some palliation for the na- 
tional fault. Our smallest unit is a thousand 
miles. A little prairie is a pleasant thing, but 
day after day of it takes on the nature of an ex- 
travaganza. A few Rockies here and there add 
considerably to the view, but ten thousand square 
miles of splendor is an emotional tax upon any 
tourist. One needs a little Kansas thrown in. 

And so it goes. The Grand Canyon is so un- 
bearably grand, the open ocean so intolerably 
open, that we soon find nothing to admire in any 
prospect that is not palpably monstrous. It is 
nature's own fault if we have been schooled to 
praise her masterpieces at the top of our lungs 
and to ignore the rest. 

I know a country, however, where there are no 
Vesuvian smoke-pots, no Himalayan heights, no 
Samoan trances, no abominable abysses, and yet 
where there are quiet lakes and haunting vistas 
that are unutterably satisfying to a man's soul. 
It is a country where there is sternness, but stern- 
ness tempered by a smile ; where there is silence, 
but silence broken by the call of birds. And if 
this should seem too soft to those who pine for 
tragic deaths, I would say that there are still 
spaces, wild and wide enough, wherein the bewil- 
dered man might perish of starvation were his 
heart set on it. 

Thus one comes to the Adirondacks, not to 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 5 

eulogize, but to enjoy. The spirit of the North 
"Woods differs from the spirit of the other great 
playgrounds of our land. In the Yellowstone one 
feels aggrieved if there be not a new wonder every 
minute. In the Adirondack Park there are no 
wonders, no grievances. Hot springs, Sequoias, 
Crater lakes, glaciers, — there are none of these 
things, not even a desert ! 

Consequently the professionals keep away. 
There are no rhinos, and the big-game hunter goes 
to Africa; there are no chances to fall a mile off 
a cliff, whereupon the big-mountaineer goes west 
and the meek inherit the good average earth that 
he has left. And^because there are so few meek, 
there is plenty of room for everybody. 

But in a matter of understanding, there can be 
no beginning except at the foundation. The re- 
gion in question first appeared above the sea about 
five billion years ago. There is, of course, dispute 
among the daters, but the average guess seems 
to be about that date if you < are inquiring from 
one who is not too stingy with his periods. 

Somewhere, then, in the antiquities of Archaean 
time, the Appalachians groped and heaved above 
the waters — the world's first seashore. Swept by 
great tides and eroded by equatorial torrents, they 
washed lazily back into the primeval ocean only 
to make a reappearance as the ages rolled on. 
This time they stayed. They were the primal 



6 THE ADIRONDACKS 

ranges, — there were no Alps, no Himalayas, no 
Eocky Mountains, — and their head, Tahawus, the 
Cloud-cleaver, was over eight thousand feet high 
before he stopped growing. Upon his lower 
slopes the ocean weeds still grew. 

Gradually more and more of the future site of 
the United States came to light. The rains and 
the frosts beat and chiseled until the granite 
ledges could withstand no longer, and about the 
island of mountains spread a rolling plain. To 
the eastward rose sister heights, and to the south 
the ranges waved in parallel chains, but there 
were no connecting ridges. Nothing infringed 
upon the Adirondack island and its mountains 
stood as the embodiment of stonish giants, — ele- 
vated, grim, alone. But they did not remain grim 
for long. The pulverized granite deepened and 
decayed into a bed for seedlings, and vast areas 
of white pine spread in utter loneliness up to the 
rounding peaks. There was, however, one spec- 
tacular change to come. Due to the infinitesimal 
but perpetual oscillation of our planet-pendulum, 
the climate cooled from a white pine to a juniper 
stage, then to the dwarf-willow stage, next to the 
stage where winter snow lasted in places through 
the summer, and finally to the stage where it 
snowed the summer through. The snows piled 
up, crushing deep, — five thousand feet, it is 
thought, — and their gigantic forefoot of ice 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 7 

gouged out great valleys, scratched the hardest 
barriers, and at last majestically retreated. Oh, 
what a slush there must have been ! 

Though the ice retreated, it could never put 
back the valley bottoms, and, behind each termi- 
nal moraine, the waters collected. On the hill- 
sides the soil began to accumulate once more ; the 
willow, juniper, and pine returned ; the moose and 
wolves and all their wild clans spread through the 
wilderness, and one evening of prehistoric calm 
a signal fire arose, kindled by the first Indian 
scout. It said, ''Come; this land is good hunt- 
ing!" 

Eival tribes saw and obeyed that signal, and so 
fierce were the contests for the deer run-ways, so 
murderous the first impulses of the rival braves, 
that the entire country became known as "The 
Dark and Bloody Ground." All the way from 
the Lower St. Lawrence came the Montagnais In- 
dians, — though I cannot conceive why, — and from 
the south, bands of the Iroquois swarmed into the 
mountains to repulse them. The Montagnais and 
other Algonquins were nearly always defeated and 
had to retreat, leaving their scalps behind them. 
Neither did they learn to bring enough food from 
their stores of fish and venison so that, running 
out of food, they had to provide a precarious vege- 
tarian commissary from the buds of moose-bushes 
and the bark of other trees. It was this spectacle 



8 THE ADIRONDACKS 

that roused the Mohawks to derision. They called 
the Montagnais tree-eaters, which, being trans- 
lated into Iroquois, means Ad-i-ron-daks. 

Thus we come to the jest that names our great- 
est eastern park-land; only we have substituted 
the dining-table for the diner. However, the 
mountains are a monument to those who fared less 
well than they; and the last laugh is again best, 
for the derisive Mohawks are remembered by an 
inconsiderable river, while the derided Montagnais 
cannot be forgotten while the most lovely moun- 
tainland endures. Other members of the ungentle 
Iroquois, the Oneidas and Onondagas, were also 
accustomed to forage on the Adirondack slopes, 
and they were as keen as the Mohawks to fall upon 
visitors from the North in this scenic slaughter- 
house. Villages grew on its outskirts, but, within 
the confines of the mountains, the frequent mas- 
sacres prevented all settlements. All was dark 
and roving and the tomahawk never rested in a 
truce. 

But there was a day coming when the savages 
could no longer pursue their bloodshed with undi- 
verted satisfaction. It came in 1609, and from 
two directions. With but the flapping of a main- 
sail, as the little Half Moon hove to at the place 
to be known as Beverswyck, Fort Orange, and aft- 
erwards, Albany, these Indians could not be ex- 
pected to be much excited. They killed a tasty 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 9 

dog to make a Dutchman's holiday, and they could 
not be expected to foresee that the off-spring of 
their guests would drive them back toward their 
diminished preserves. Their medicine men pre- 
dicted none of the startling events that the same 
summer already had witnessed further north. 

Near the ruins of Fort Ticonderoga is an old 
rock, cleft from the mountain, which is called Split 
Eock to this day. This marked the ancient do- 
main of the Algonquin from the Mohawk. But 
on a certain day in July, a fleet of war canoes, 
filled with painted Algonquins and accompanied 
by a Frenchman who looked very much like Wil- 
liam Shakspere, crossed the boundary, moving 
south. They were met at twilight off the promon- 
tory that was afterward to see so much of the 
fortunes of war, and, secure in their new war- 
magic, waited till the dawn. The Mohawks at- 
tacked, but the new French fire-arms had the final 
word. 

It is strange that the word of this encounter in 
July had not tempered the hospitality shown Hud- 
son in September ; but the Englishman sailed down 
his river without knowing how far he was from 
China, the port of his endeavor, and without guess- 
ing how near he was to his great contemporary 
and national rival who also was bent on going 
cross lots to Kubla Khan. 

With firearms and new reasons for rivalry, the 



10 THE ADIRONDACKS 

differences between the northern and southern 
wildernesses grew more sharp. The Mohawks 
were so enraged at the alliance of their old enemies 
with France that when the pale faces made their 
way up from New Amsterdam and when the Eng- 
lish later sought their aid, they were ready to give 
it. There is no reason to doubt that it was the few 
shots fired by Champlain that later lost New 
France to Saxon rule. 

While Indians and whites were swarming up 
and down the Lake-that-is-the-Gate-of-the-Coun- 
try, there was very little encroachment upon the 
Adirondacks. New Amsterdam in 1614, Bevers- 
wyck in 1630, Schenectady in 1662, Amsterdam in 
the Mohawk Valley in 1716, Utica in 1793, Lake 
Pleasant in 1795, Long Lake in 1830, Indian Lake 
in 1845 — these are the dates (as nearly as I could 
discover) of the first houses, but it must be re- 
membered that white men, the coureurs de hois, 
had run through every valley, that in some cases 
lumber had been taken, and that by 1861 the last 
moose had been shot out of the country. 

With the vast areas of the Empire State that 
were more richly soiled, more readily acquirable, 
it is, at first, difficult to see why any white men 
should choose to locate within the area of the 
North Woods. But the blood of the frontiersmen 
still raced in the national veins; the freedom of 
untimbered reaches and the hazards of new valleys 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 11 

haunted the Boones of the North. The long pe- 
riod between the confounding of Burgoyne and 
the expansions following the War of 1812 was an 
age of individual prowess and isolated occupation 
along the natural waterways of "The Dark and 
Bloody Ground." It was a half century of racial 
meetings, — and partings. 

For the Indian it was a time of twilight and 
eclipse. The last great war parties had come from 
the north and been forgotten. One of them left a 
flotilla of a thousand canoes at the head waters of 
the St. Regis where they were discovered later 
under the mold of a century, the reminder of some 
massacre. Imperceptibly the dusky wanderers 
faded from actual encounter into hearsay, and 
finally into tradition. It is well for them that 
there was a Parkman to portray the real Iroquois 
whose name was his proudest boast — "The men 
who surpass all others." 

The patroon had gone, too, with the wigwam, 
and babies who no longer woke crying at some 
shivery war-whoop were also no longer lullabied 
to the cradle strains of: 

"Trip a trop a troontjes, 
De varkens in de boontjes, 
De koetzes in de klaver, 
De paarden in de haver, 
De eenjes in de waterplas, 
De kalf in de lang gras, 
So groot mijn kleine poppetje was." 



12 THE ADIRONDACKS 

The **bo' jour," too, was but a broken echo 
from the St. Lawrence outposts, though, from the 
western wilderness in 1815, drifted strange reports 
of revelries where the brother of Napoleon had 
bought a hundred thousand acres in a vain effort 
to mingle the perfumes of Versailles with the 
scents of the wilderness. 

Yearly the meetings of the history-makers grew 
less frequent and yearly the thin tide of home- 
makers crept up from the south. These were 
mainly Irish and Scotch, the inveterate colonizers. 

At first the skin-hunters prospered. The Iro- 
quois had talked of the Kohsaraga, the Beaver- 
Hunting Country; and because beaver were easy 
to capture, within a couple of decades after the 
Erie Canal had focussed the attention of mer- 
chants upon the north, it was Kohsaraga no more. 

Then the prospectors told their tales. To this 
day one hears of Adirondack gold where mines 
can never be. But there was magnetic iron ore, 
in quantities that some day may pay the working, 
but which then served only to attract capital to 
erect ambitious iron works whose future was only 
disuse and decay. 

Lumberers were better rewarded, and the easier 
valleys and nearer slopes were stripped of hem- 
lock and white pine. Tanneries and sawmills were 
erected for temporary use, and the wanderer to- 
day often stumbles upon raspberry patches that 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 13 

hide the moldering remains of shanties. In the 
older river towns of Hinckley, Corinth, and For- 
estport there are still told stories of brave ex- 
ploits of the river men. 

Though the kind of inhabitant had changed with 
the changing centuries until a coureur-de-bois, or 
a war-painted Iroquois would have been as un- 
usual a sight as a Chinaman, until 1870 the land 
was the same game-filled paradise of shining lake 
and looming mountain as of old. Along the At- 
lantic seaboard cities were already congesting. 
People were beginning to take vacations, but they 
took them on porches or in picnics, or, if very ven- 
turous and rich, went to Europe. Thought of run- 
ning up to the Adirondacks was only less hare- 
brained than planning an air flight. It simply did 
not figure in the prospectuses of the railroads. 
These were beginning to enlarge their service and 
even to carry passengers on pleasure errands. 
The delight of camping was, in the common opin- 
ion, similar to the other pleasures of the field — 
usually left to asses. 

But the ten years, beginning about 1880, saw a 
change. During the Civil War the Adirondack 
fastnesses had harbored men who had arrived by 
night and who did not leave any address at home — 
fugitives from the draft. Some stayed. Others 
returned (when one did not have to be furtive to* 
be safe) to report on the excellence of a venison- 



i4j the adirondacks 

and-trout cuisine. And since a fish hook and a 
rifle comprised almost their sole need for a sum- 
mer's outing, it was cheaper to take their families 
there than to pay the bills for this new fad of 
beach-front hotels. This was the genesis of the 
summer boarder. 

To other and more legitimate ears, meanwhile, 
had come the report issued by a certain Verplanck 
Colvin, an enthusiastic woods-lover, who had sur- 
veyed the region in 1870 and returned his findings 
to the metropolitan world. Here was news worth 
attention. The millions of acres that every five 
years had been sold by the State for unpaid taxes 
began to be bought up by men who knew the value 
of green timber and the worth of falling water. 
Vast estates were bought outright for private pre- 
serves ; still vaster areas were leased for the tim- 
ber upon them and then allowed to lapse into the 
State's possession. It was all done quietly, and 
the few men who had made their homes in the 
Keene Valley, at Saranac, and down the Fulton 
Chain, who peddled their venison throughout the 
year and made scant money guiding the owners of 
the preserves dreamt not of its significance. 
There were not blazed trails then to every lake, 
and a guide who knew his business was as neces- 
sary as sugar in tea. And the guides did know 
their business. They knew their own native spots 
of land ; they counseled wisely, shot well, and kept 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 15 

their word. But they knew neither the power of 
money nor the greed for wealth. The long win- 
ter season saw them gather about stoves, tell long 
tales, and chew. There is one volume, at least, 
where such things may be read that were dreamt 
of only in the Adirondack woodsman's philosophy. 
Try "Adirondack Adventures," if you find some 
one to lend it to you, and see if Adirondack Mur- 
ray does not conjure up for you these lean, rank- 
whiskered men, the stuffy cabin, and the whole 
wilderness howling just the other side of the thick 
plank door. 

The long winter season was also rich harvest 
time for the timber thieves. Indeed, if Hough, 
Colvin, The Association for the Preservation of 
the Adirondacks, a succession of public-spirited 
governors, and tireless groups of incorruptible 
persons had not labored for a generation, there 
would have been no great North Woods for future 
Americans to enjoy. The people awoke to the 
fact that much land had escaped in the usual mys- 
terious manner from the public treasury. Later, 
only by herculean efforts on the part of the few, 
was a succession of bills prevented from passing 
the legislature, which would have permitted com- 
panies to dam most of the valley land at public 
expense for private profit. Forest fires annually 
ruined large areas ; the stretches of forested coun- 
try rapidly decreasing in size pointed to the com- 



16 THE ADIRONDACKS 

plete extermination of all game. Streams that 
had supplied trout for the taking were polluted 
by chemicals or dynamited for immediate gains. 
Bribery in the legislative bodies and ruthless de- 
struction at the front combined for a final spurt 
of depredation. But victory came in the nick of 
time. 

For years the State had been acquiring and 
holding lands, often denuded, to be sure, which 
lumber interests did not pay the taxes on. It was 
this nucleus of property that gave the idea for the 
Park. Curiously enough, in this way, avarice was 
its own undoing. In 1877, Hough laid down the 
project that Colvin had suggested. In 1885 the 
Forest Preserve was created, and the popular vote 
in 1894 set it aside for the use of all the people 
forever. So slow, however, was the progress of 
the march of the law against the forays of cor- 
ruption, that not until 1908 did the number of 
enforcements of the law exceed the number of un- 
punished violations. Inasmuch, also, as the State 
owned less than half the acreage of forest and 
lake, and as careless and even criminal manage- 
ment of the rest endangered the entire holdings of 
the State, immediate action became necessary. 

So in 1916, a proposition was brought before 
the voters of the State as to whether a bond issue 
for increasing the State holding should be author- 
ized in the November election. By a great ma- 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 19 

jority in New York City, and by a smaller majority 
over the State, the issue was approved, and the 
$7,500,000 made available will go far to intrench 
the interests of the State, and the East, for that 
matter. For the Adirondacks has become the 
great pleasure ground of immense numbers of va- 
cationists. To have failed to back up the admin- 
istration of the Park at this critical time in its 
existence, would have been a crime to the millions 
of workers in cities who will never be able to 
afford the time to go to the great breathing spaces 
of the West. Democracy, in ultimately recogniz- 
ing what is best for itself, has again triumphed. 
And this time, before it was entirely too late. 

If the adventures of the land itself were so cru- 
cial, the status of the land-holders was even more 
thrilling. For a hundred years the settlers had 
lived undisturbed, except by the severities of cli- 
mate, the hardships of wilderness life, the draw- 
backs of the isolated. From 1880 to 1890 they 
had begun to realize that boarders had bank-ac- 
counts. They began to enlarge their inns, to esti- 
mate upon their next summer's takings. Moun- 
tain lamb was served throughout the year, and 
many of them had never seen a railroad, but these 
men of independence had grown subtly dependent 
upon the outside world. 

Then came the first of a series of revolutions 
in their affairs. A railroad was pushed north 



20 THE ADIRONDACKS 

from Eemsen, splitting the wilderness. Huge do- 
mains beside it fell overnight into private hands, 
though some of the territory undoubtedly had 
been the State 's. At one blow the Adirondackers 
were bereft of patronage and hunting grounds. 

The patronage followed the rails. What was 
the use of tedious days on stages when steam 
would take one into the heart of the coveted shoot- 
ing territory? Inn-keepers were left with noth- 
ing but empty beds, while new hotels with baths 
and billiard rooms shot up like geysers along 
the double steel line of the new enterprise. 
If the guests did not shoot the deer from the rail- 
road trains, as kid-gloved adventurers shot the 
lions in Africa, it was because they were satiated. 
Fifty deer could be seen in an hour's run through 
the woods on an August day. It was all rare fun 
for everybody except the original settlers — the 
deer and the backwoodsmen. 

But the second in the series of calamities fol- 
lowed hard upon the heels of the diverted board- 
ers. Little kingdoms were cut out of the choicest 
deer ranges, and keepers stood on guard. Trails 
that for generations had been short cuts through 
the forest were found fenced, and the fence rein- 
forced by a rifleman. It was the Saxon days of 
the New Forest over again, and the tragedy of 
William Rufus was reenacted in detail. 

A preserve owner in the north, whether from too 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 21 

much pride of estate or too little sense in its 
administering, was found shot in the back. The 
horse that was pulling him wandered into the vil- 
lage with a bleeding rump where the bullet still 
lodged. Searchers came upon the man, cold and 
past tale-bearing; but throughout the entire Adi- 
rondacks each owner of a preserve construed the 
attack as upon himself. Fear, spurred in cases by 
a guilty conscience, advised flight. The exodus, 
as will be remembered, was sudden, hasty, and 
complete. For years only the armed protectorate 
guarded the "camp"; the owner was examining 
art treasures in Europe. 

Blame for the crisis was as usual almost equally 
deserved. The preserve owner, in most cases, had 
actually preserved the forest by financing the fight 
against the timber thief and the water-power 
scoundrel. Without his aid it is a question 
whether there would have remained anything but 
a desert for the inhabitant to roam over. On the 
other hand, the spirit of give and take in the 
mountains had been admirable. Every man's 
property was, to a certain extent, the next man's. 
Not only were mountain slopes and trout streams 
free for all, but in necessity, cabin and food as 
well. More than once I have spread my blankets 
on another man's bunk, cooked with his dishes, 
and known that, if he came suddenly upon me, 
I would not have to explain. As in the West, you 



22 THE ADIRONDACKS 

were free to use another man's wood and food. 
The only unwritten stipulation was not to leave 
his dishes unwashed. Therefore the sudden influx 
of wealthy outsiders, with their haughty prohibi- 
tions and displays of unsuitable luxury, was a 
particularly hard pill to swallow after the priva- 
tion caused by the move of the center of summer 
population from inns to railroad hotels. 

Passion ebbed with time, however. Burnings 
of preserves grew less frequent. More people 
used the woods in summer, and prosperity came 
back. Such was the condition in 1910. 

Then, as suddenly as its predecessors, came the 
third and greatest change in Adirondack affairs. 
The map was altered in a summer by the automo- 
bile. A mighty flood of gasoline washed out in- 
vestments that had taken two decades to grow 
substantial. It swept comparative wealth back to 
the doors of the very old proprietors who had been 
ruined by the railroad and the preserves. Hotels, 
whose clients had formerly come for the summer, 
could now only claim them for a night. The back- 
woods innkeepers, whose only comforts had been 
bitter memories and a plug of tobacco, began to 
wear white collars on Sunday. 

But the greatest change was in the Park itself. 
Good roads were laid along the main arteries and 
projected everywhere. Contractors were forced 
by public sentiment to expend more than a mere 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 23 

fraction of the public money upon public needs. 
Centers of distribution for hunting parties swelled 
into villages ; villages became towns. Saranac to- 
day is a young city. The railroads bettered their 
service in an effort to divert back a certain per 
cent, of the maddened motorists. The wilderness 
that had had its reticences for a thousand cen- 
turies grew spotty with vacationists. 

The effect of all this on you, depends on what 
kind of a man you are. If you think in mass num- 
bers, there is great satisfaction. If you do not, 
beside the feeling of exhilaration that development 
always gives, there runs a shadow of sadness that 
the woods, at last, have been found by the million; 
that the day of *'old man Phelps" and his race 
is past. But, looking at the matter from neither 
extremity, there will be found comfort for both 
those who delight in society and for those who 
prefer the untenanted forest. Within the con- 
fines of the Park exist great possibilities for every 
temperament. Its boundaries enclose all that is 
scenically best of the central portion of the Adi- 
rondack region. The Park, counting public and 
private lands, embraces 3,313,564 acres. Forty- 
eight per cent, of this belongs to the State ; fifteen 
per cent, is private preserve; six per cent, small 
private holdings; twenty-three per cent, belongs 
to lumber companies; six per cent, is improved, 
and the remaining two per cent, is retained by 



24 THE ADIRONDACKS 

mineral companies. The recent bond issue will 
bring the State's holdings well over the halfway 
mark. In another chapter will be detailed the 
varied uses to which any visitor, whether New 
Yorker or not, may put this princely estate. 

There seems but one more dimension for expan- 
sion, and that a matter of the calendar. Time was 
when July and August saw the season finished. 
Then, when some stubborn beauty lover stayed, 
and Labor Day ceased to tyrannize, September had 
a chance to exercise her charms. Husbands went 
up to bring their ladies home, and stayed to shoot. 
Now, from mid-December to March, one may wan- 
der into the woods with snow-shoes and be re- 
garded as neither childish nor unbalanced. In- 
deed, some say a mid- winter night's dream is by 
far the fairest of all. 

With this bare outline of the story of the Park, 
I must be content. It is only too easy to go on 
and on, to expand the obvious while forgetting 
that, of all persons who deserves the inverted 
thumb, he is foremost who starts out as guide and 
ends up with the garrulity of the seeing-every- 
thing man. One must expose the dangers; one 
should point out the routes that better the arrival ; 
but not to let the traveler discover the chief glories 
for himself is an act that deserves shooting at 
sunrise. So do not expect either Luggins or my- 



AN ABORIGINAL APPROACH 25 

self to stamp, explain and vivisect the beauties of 
the road. 

Despite all modern conveniences, the Adiron- 
dack wilderness remains. Despite the upholstered 
car, the thermos flask, the automatic fusillader, 
the mountains furnish humble pleasures that can 
never be exhausted. Seldom were our travels 
salted with superlatives. Indeed, the chief danger 
lay in our tendency to revel in the smallness of 
our pleasures. In rereading this log I find the 
greatest fault is just that. The data are explicit, 
the beauties taken for granted. You must begin, 
then, to wonder why Lynn and I, having seen 
some of the West's best wonders came to love 
this lake-starred, balsam forest better than that 
dazzling land nearer the setting sun. 



CHAPTER II 

NOETH CEEEK TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 

WE set out rather self-consciously, I remeni- 
ber, and with an air of cavalcade. Lynn 
led off in knickerbockers and flannel shirt with a 
small pack-basket on his back. His little Western 
horse followed, as he had grown well accustomed 
to do on Wyoming trails, with the blanket rolls, 
the little tent, and the provisions that were meant 
to see us through the first stage of our indepen- 
dence. A soft south wind and I brought up the 
rear. I carried the fishing-rods, and the June 
sun promised an over-tardy spring at last. The 
red- winged blackbirds and the meadow-larks could 
not keep it to themselves. 

To Lynn and myself about all that was of im- 
portance loomed before us; our baggage, a set 
of virgin mountains, and vacation. The vacation 
seemed capacious enough, viewed from the large 
end. The duffle bags did n 't. They looked a trifle 
bulgy. So did the mountains. That was about 
all one could say for them when reminiscences of 
Montana rose to the lips only to die there out of 
deference to our new adventure. Indeed, I was 

26 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 27 

a trifle worried at the outset because from the 
memories of a youthful trip I had drawn upon 
my comrade's credulity to the point of making a 
summer of it in the Adirondacks. And now the 
Adirondacks did not rise to the occasion. 

But Lynn had set himself to outwhistling the 
birds, and Luggins fairly beamed at the prospect, 
as well he might, — a winding easy road, much 
grass in sight, and none of those familiar preci- 
pices with which his former excursions with us 
had been strewn! So, gratified, as if I were re- 
sponsible for the drenching sunlight and the fresh- 
foliaged hills, I began to tread on air. After 
much packing and much planning we were off. 

There was perhaps a subtler reason for the glee 
at our setting forth. We had had to spend the 
night at North Creek, and North Creek may best 
be described as a most excellent point to depart 
from. It exists chiefly for people to leave it. 
And doubtless it has grown so calloused to fare- 
wells that it has given over any attempts to make 
the departing guest sorrow at the prospect. Cer- 
tainly we didn't. 

If the hotels of North Creek suffer from the 
transitoriness of their guests, the town itself, in- 
deed, any town, would suffer by comparison with 
its surroundings. On one side the stripling Hud- 
son glitters and slides; on the other Gore Moun- 
tain's slopes and foot-hills wrinkle into alluring 



28 THE ADIRONDACKS 

distances of green. And, as if for a day, the 
strings of houses straggle tawdrily between, ad- 
vertising the drinks and tobaccos in a way to 
make the advertiser infamous. 

Our road clung to the river for a smart hour's 
pacing. Only the telegraph wires were to show 
that the world of shopkeepers was not perma- 
nently at our backs. And on them occasionally 
played a tune — the wild tune that Thoreau loved 
most to hear. Also bluebirds, kingbirds, swallows 
sat upon them. And all the time the shallow, 
rippling Hudson, with its stranded logs, turned 
some corner and showed us further into the heart 
of the highlands. 

At North River we had such a dinner as was to 
be remembered, country style and country cour- 
tesy and all five courses for fifty cents. Luggins, 
too, made industrious use of the occasion and 
showed a sorry reluctance to resume the road for 
one who had been fattened for a pilgrimage. But 
one o'clock saw us turning to the southwest and 
away from the river, with constantly rising spirits. 
That very night was to bed us under stars. 

As we were much surprised to find, our mode of 
travel appeared to throw nearly every one into a 
fever of curiosity or concern. In the West not an 
eyebrow would have been raised if we had started 
to cross the Staked Plains with the same outfit, 
but in North Creek we had noticed no metropolitan 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 29 

reticence concerning our peculiarity, and at the 
little hotel where we lunched some guides pre- 
dicted misadventure ahead. We gathered that to 
go conventionally in the Adirondacks one must 
travel either by stage, in a motor bus or private 
automobile, on foot or in canoes. 

But we had faith in Luggins. He was a birth- 
right member in the pragmatic school of optimists. 
Like God in Browning's mad poem, he never said 
a word, even at murder. There was no vicissitude 
that he had not gone through. His ordinary 
course was unpretentious plodding, but he would 
have scaled the Alps if we had led him on. He 
was willing at any moment to sleep or swim, fast 
or feast, as necessity demanded. And we grew 
to have an exaggerated tenderness for the crooked 
streak of white down his nose. 

By the turn of the afternoon we had left the 
highway and plunged down steeply for a few rods 
through the woods to come upon the lake called 
Thirteenth Lake, a continuation, I suppose, of 
the Fulton Chain that runs bravely up to Eighth 
and stops perplexed like the Parson in the ''One 
Hoss Shay." 

Thirteenth Lake runs southwest by northeast 
as do nearly all the Adirondack waters. The 
shadow was just commencing to steal out from the 
lee of the mountain on its farther shore, half a 
mile away, when we stopped on the little promon- 



so THE ADIRONDACKS 

tory that had apparently been created for our 
camp site. It took but a moment to dispossess 
Luggins of his load and but another to arrange 
our apartment. At the risk of seeming to gloat, 
I am intruding the details, just this once. 

Lynn and I had been pals on so many of these 
parties that we worked with the silence and pre- 
cision of knitting needles. Our foremost discov- 
ery had been that two can accomplish more upon 
one job by cooperation that they can by dividing 
the chores into each-man-for-himself operations. 
We both put up the tent, both chopped the fire- 
wood, both cooked, and both ate. 

Probably during the progress of this account 
there will intrude an itemized list of household 
gods. It is a temptation too traditional to be 
eluded. Wliere is the camper who writes or the 
writer who camps who has ever let slip the chance 
to corrupt some other's comfort with his own con- 
traptions ? The delight to preach is too universal 
whether it be in a promulgation of the pulpit 
or in an exhortation on some fantastic frying-pan. 

But not now is the time to gloat upon our con- 
tentments. Now but two articles demand descrip- 
tion — our tent and our beds. The tent was a baker 
of brown waterproofing. A baker tent is the sort 
that opens to the fire along the entire front and 
entails unnecessary labor for quite unnecessary 
comfort. For a one-night stand it can be set up 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 31 

in a few minutes ; for an indefinite stay it can be 
made elaborately cheerful. At any time it affords 
the luxuries of dryness, warmth, and space in 
which to have one's being. The amount of wood 
that can be burned before a baker through an 
autumn night is more than a matter of sentiment. 
It means hard labor — indeed, the unnecessary 
labor to which I referred, for other tents will do. 
But so will your town house, if it comes to a 
question of being easy. Lynn and I would have 
put up our baker at any cost just for the unindus- 
trious hour of after-supper. To loaf before the 
great backlog, with the forest freshness drifting 
in at the sides, and your spirits soaring under the 
quite inadequate heavens, is the best privilege 
of a hard day. 

Bed comes next. Our beds had been the text 
of many a speculation and experiment during our 
past trips. We had foreborne to request Luggins 
to carry cots, and yet we refused to sleep on bare 
ground or balsam tips plucked at a too large cost 
of time. Air cushions were too expensive and 
sleeping bags too warm. Our solution was the 
cot, after all, but minus its woodwork. With the 
canvas hooked upon two parallel logs, securely 
staked apart, each could procure him the easiest 
and most somnifacient bed in the world for the 
carriage of two pounds of canvas and the neces- 
sary quilts and blankets to keep him warm. And 



32 THE ADIRONDACKS 

these we wished upon Luggins without qualm. 

How much humanity there is in the act of pitch- 
ing a tent! The race seems more tender in the 
deed. It compounds all the past and sweetest 
emotions — door-stone, hearthstone, shelter, home. 
They are all there, renewed each setting-up time 
with a newness that house-buying never feels. 
But with Lynn and myself the rite began always 
with a bit of folly that I find we share with most 
pitchers of tents. We always had an eye to the 
view. The practice was even more preposterous 
than the theory. 

The theory presupposed that we would retire 
at sunset with the glorious orb fading away behind 
the encrimsoned peaks, that we would drowse off 
with the evening star etching itself into our 
dreams, and that we would awake to the enjoyment 
of limpid beams upspringing from a gilded hori- 
zon. The theory is flattery. The reality is dis- 
illusion. "We mostly turned in dog-tired and 
rather late. We fell asleep with the usual speed 
of falling bodies. We woke in the extremity of 
hunger. We rose with never a glance at the hori- 
zon. There was no margin for rhapsody and only 
a legendary interest in anything but breakfast. 
And yet we always posed that tent. I trust that 
a subtler influence than logic can suspect, ratified 
the instinct. 

Making all allowances for first enthusiasms, 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 33 

Thirteenth Lake retains a comeliness in our mem- 
ories that more gifted localities do not. It com- 
posed, as we found, all the essentials of an excel- 
lent base for beginnings into a tract of interest 
and beauty. Its woods were wild but not remote ; 
its climbs steep, but not drastic. Its fish catch- 
able. 

The next morning turned bracing cool before a 
west wind. Great white clouds put on sail in a 
sky that shone blue and spacious. And we set 
forth to overlook the country from a small moun- 
tain called Peaked. The excursion developed into 
an engaging little climb. In a boat, which we 
borrowed from a genial gentleman in overalls, we 
crossed the lake. A trail followed a tiny stream 
to its source in Peaked Mountain Pond, and turned 
to the right. The last few yards of the ascent 
was almost mountaineering, being bare and rugged 
rock. From the summit there opened out a view 
that is not too common from the lower Adirondack 
peaks, which, under altitudes of thirty-five hun- 
dred feet, are usually wooded. In the direction of 
the Hudson River stretched the green and white 
checkerboard of settlement and clearing, while on 
the other sides rolled the almost unbroken forest. 
Above us the summery clouds promised a truce 
between storms for several days. Though rising 
only a few hundred feet, Peaked was a most satis- 
fying mountain. 



84 THE ADIRONDACKS 

We entertained our boat-lender at a luncheon. 
Lynn contributed corn-bread, and I, sunnies, 
caught at the overalled gentleman's advice. He 
had said: *'If you row up to the inlet yonder, 
you '11 have some real smart fishin'. You kin 
catch all you kin eat at twenty throws.'* And I 
had. Fat sunnies fried in butter shall not mas- 
querade as bass, nor yet as trout, but men back 
from climbing do not eat them listlessly for all 
that. 

Our guest, who, in his duller moments pursued 
a trade at North Creek, spent much of his time, he 
told us, at Thirteenth Lake. Between applica- 
tions of corn-bread and maple syrup the good man 
vouchsafed us much first-hand information on the 
neighborhood. He told us that we would see many 
deer at Hour Pond, a circular shallow of pic- 
turesque water where lily pads grow extrava- 
gantly. He held us by accounts of the wilderness 
about Botheration Flow. He talked of the garnet 
mines in the vicinity. And we went with him to 
his little shack to see a large stone that he had 
found. 

Our eyes were mostly for the shack ; it was such 
an example of slovenliness. Newspapers of his- 
toric times, clothes of the same date, ingredients 
of past and future meals, bedclothes, were all part 
of the baggage of this unspeakable den. How a 
gentleman who had escaped from North Creek to 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 37 

the woods could fraternize with such filth in the 
respectable society of forest trees and beside the 
clean waters is a mystery that laziness alone does 
not explain. Occasionally among the Adirondack 
hermits you will find one, slothful and revolting 
when it comes to sanitation and the broom, though 
otherwise full of good sense. But for the most 
part the trappers, the woodsmen, and guides, who 
spend much of their time alone, are excellent 
housekeepers. Their dishes are always washed, 
their wood-bins filled, their clothes sewed with the 
carefulness of sailors. It is oftener the people of 
cities who live catch as catch can. 

We were in a hurry to reach the Kunjamuk 
country and on that account neglected to profit by 
the old man^s cheerful descriptions of many 
places. But we did go up Gore Mountain. It 
attains the respectable altitude of 3540 feet and 
gives one a look-off into blue counties. The view 
was not so interesting, barring the charming pros- 
pect of the Hudson's valley, as the descent on the 
western side. There is unfrequented wildland, 
indeed. You sink into thick mosses, at peril to 
your legs. You climb great fallen trunks. It is 
just the sort of wet and secretive wilderness that 
neither repels by inaccessibility nor attracts by 
special beauty. You would expect the warblers 
to nest there in content. From our night encamp- 
ment along Botheration Flow we heard the first 



38 THE ADIRONDACKS 

barred owl barking; leagues off it seemed, across 
the wide and lonely wilderness. 

Botheration Flow, like King's Flow and the 
other flows, is a watercourse of special design, 
peculiarly misnamed. There is no flow. The 
natural ambition of a stream is to get somewhere. 
But a flow, having been thwarted by reduced valley 
slope or beaver dams or human agency, barely 
creeps. The result is excellent canoeing. On these 
flows it is possible to paddle for miles, or to fish 
from a boat where spring, holes harbor trout, to 
surprise deer at nightfall, or simply float on an 
inverted sky in the amazing twilight beauty of 
these water-lanes. They are numerous in all parts 
of the Park except the northeastern. And Both- 
eration, which was our first, grappled us to it with 
speedy attachment. We finally returned our bor- 
rowed canoe to our dirty counsellor with a regret 
that was only surpassed by our desires to be for- 
warded upon our journey. Beautiful as the Thir- 
teenth region was, it was but the threshold of the 
woods, and the unbroken forest ahead made us 
uneasy with its call. Before we went, however, 
we obtained permission from the owner to over- 
haul his haggard den. It was a ghoulish job, but 
we felt distinctly better for having repaid him for 
his loans by the sweat of a profound house- 
cleaning. 

In the secluding mists of early morning we set 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 39 

Luggins again to his interrupted profession. Our 
winding road took us in the general direction of 
Indian Lake. The tops of the moderate moun- 
tains that lay beside us were not visible, but alter- 
nate openings and meetings of the wood offered 
the variety that devours the miles. There was a 
vague loneliness of the landscape caused by un- 
inhabited clearings. It was superior in degree to 
the aloofness of the forest itself. The prepared 
spaces seemed to long for an occupancy and a 
business of which the uncleared land did not hint. 
Lynn and I both felt this, and after the day's 
march, when we pitched our tent by a meadow, 
rank with uncut hay, the domestic wildness lay 
upon our spirits. We were glad to make an early 
night of it. 

In the morning lifted clouds showed what a 
superb sleeping room we had unwittingly found. 
Our one object had been to gratify Luggins' deep 
desire for the rich meadow-grass. Our own 
breakfast was eaten before a landscape of sub- 
dued beauty. Toward the west flanking hills 
dipped sharply and through the wide vale rose 
Snowy Mountain, master by a head of his long 
range. This side of him lay Indian Lake, in- 
visible. Below us shone a bright arc of the King's 
Flow. To the south the valley of the dark Kun- 
jamuk invited, while behind us rolled the green 
shoulders of mountains. 



40 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Late May and June are the great bird months 
of the Adirondacks. However still the woods may 
be at other seasons of the year, in the mating 
month there is too much joy to be swallowed up 
by the grim spruces. Clearings become orches- 
tral, and even the deep forest has its songs. Who- 
ever has heard the whitethroat in some remote 
valley or the hermit thrush from the deep wood 
at evening has been bound with invisible strings 
to the wilderness. The long sweet warbling of 
a flock of purple finches is tenderness itself. 

By July there are gaps in the chorus, and soon 
after an infinite quiet settles upon the forest, 
broken by sounds that only he that hath ears to 
hear will have the sensibility to detect. 

The immediate goal of campers by King's Flow 
is a curious formation called Chimney Mountain 
which does everything a chimney should do, but 
smoke. This unique structure, lying about seven 
miles to the southeast of Indian Lake Village, 
rises in a sixty-foot pinnacle from a mountain 
already 2650 feet in the air. Mr. William J. 
Miller in a New York State Museum Bulletin ex- 
plains the interesting geologic formation by ero- 
sion. He states that an inclined plane of rock 
weathered on the under side of its upper end until 
a huge block cracked off. This left the tower and 
a rift, 650 feet long, 250 deep, and 300 wide, with 
a slope at an angle of fifty degrees. The appear- 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 41 

ance of the crater-like cavity beside the chimney 
is misleading, and visitors are inclined to defraud 
erosion of its due by ascribing the fissures, pin- 
nacle, and crater to volcanic action. Although it 
is not, the spectacle is unique in the Adirondacks, 
and we found it and the view worth the clamber. 

And, in the name of all that is rude, that was 
an aggravating ascent! For, after ten minutes 
over fields and ten through open wood by a pel- 
lucid brook, we came to one of those arrangements 
of the devil, known as a bum. On this side of the 
mountain, the west, the rise is nearly a thousand 
feet in half a mile, and that is pretty stiff going. 
The burn made it seem like ten thousand, for a 
burn is nature's barbed-wire entanglement. The 
fire had burned off the wood loam, and a million 
rocks projected. The sound-looking places let us 
through. Fallen trees criss-crossed at the height 
of our waists, too sticky to crawl under, too hard to 
flounder over. We had to wiggle through. In 
the less cumbered spots, briers bloomed to heaven. 
The sun came out with violence. We were thirty 
minutes crossing this fallacious short-cut which 
an able kangaroo could have done in twenty leaps. 
Weeks later we learned that there is a long way 
round by a trail — and probably a still longer hunt 
for it. 

By a series of disablements we at last emerged 
from the narrow zone at the entrance to a cave, 



4i2 THE ADIRONDACKS 

which, unlike the Sibyl's, spouted not hot air, but 
cool. It was a fissure in the wall of the mountain, 
with a small opening at the top. This broadened 
as it descended. We let down our sweating selves 
between its dripping walls with gratitude. In the 
interior dimness we crawled upon snow covered 
with dirt and small stones. Later, when we came 
to inquire about this singular mountain which had 
a refrigerator as well as a chimney, we learned 
that on ordinary summers the supply of snow 
lasted into the autumn, sometimes the season 
round. 

Lynn, of course, coveted a seat upon the un- 
steady-looking chimney. I reminded him of the 
half-gale that was now blowing from the north- 
west, and of his home and mother. There seemed 
to be little actual danger. Indeed when he waved 
to me, I began to follow and, once starting, dis- 
liked to stop. I huddled close to the rocks, insert- 
ing my fingers in the crevices. The wind piped 
at my ears. In fact at the time there seemed no 
reason why a harder puff should not waft me off 
and down to the gravestones below. 

But from the pinnacle much of the amiable 
provinces of Warren and Hamilton Counties 
spread before us. On the north lay an open val- 
ley, with the clay-colored road slashing here and 
there into a hill. It was the State road that runs 
from North Creek to Indian Lake Village. To the 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 43 

west and south rose the mountains about Indian 
Lake. Bellying clouds threw a wash of shadow 
over the forest and clearings. And always did old 
Kunjamuk draw attention to his post in the south. 
I have seen this mountain from every side and 
in every weather, but never, even at the sunniest 
does he lose his aspect of piratical blackness. 

The wind howled cheerfully at our turret, and 
my distrust of the descent was only exceeded by 
my definite dislike for freezing on the Chimney. 
Yet going down was not so bad as I expected. 
Only once did I have to cling to the ledge while my 
feet groped for their inch of standing room. But 
I do remember thinking that if my remains were 
to garnish the bottom of some precipice I hoped 
it would be a taller one — the Jungfrau's, perhaps, 
or the Grand Canyon. 

"We got back to our tent in time to catch some 
trout from King's Flow for lunch, and since Lug- 
gins was still stowing ballast considerably to hay- 
ward, we went into consultation with the map. 

There are, in the main, but two varieties of 
travelers — the tourist and the tramp. 

The tourist leaves nothing to chance or to the 
gods. He knows weeks ahead just where he is 
to stop and how much he is going to tip the waiter. 
A time-table stimulates him like strong drink. He 
intoxicates himself with railway folders, and the 
more complicated the routing, the better he is 



44 THE ADIRONDACKS 

pleased. Such creatures enjoy the things they 
see, I am forced to suppose, but I wager it is only 
if the sights do not conflict with the guide-book. 

The tramp, on the other hand, is touchy about 
plans. For him the worst thing that can be said 
about a trip is that it was premeditated. For him 
the first fine cream of the road must not be 
skimmed by the descriptions of any guide. He 
must have no times definitely scheduled, no spaces 
exactly measured out. Such creatures eat, I pre- 
sume, but it must be done extemporaneously. 

Lynn's temperament and mine fell well within 
these lines. We often differed and sometimes dis- 
agreed, fortunately, for by complaisance fell the 
angels. But both of us were content, after the 
skeleton of our adventures was arranged, to let 
the complexion of the moment be decided by the 
moment. Our scheme was for each to state his 
desire as plausibly as he could and then we would 
bide by the golden mean. This had worked so well 
on our other trips that we had long ago lost any 
false unselfishness in the preliminary statement of 
ambitions. In our compromises we would have 
made Henry Clay blush like a dilettante. 

In this case our question was three-fold ; whether 
to strike across through three hours of woodland 
to the shores of Indian Lake where friends of 
ours were encamped, or to take a day's circuit 
by Indian Lake Village and thence to their camp, 



TO CHIMNEY MOUNTAIN 45 

or to spend a week in the march around to Specu- 
lator. The decision was not difficult, this time, 
for in the backs of our two heads was beginning 
to blossom the scheme of seeing the Adirondack 
Park from top to bottom, and from side to side. 
If Lynn can claim any of the more forbidding 
virtues, it is that of thoroughness. Later I found 
out that he secretly intended to see every mile 
of our highland wilderness, and I had secretly 
already begun to take notes. So the zealot in both 
of us voted for the long detour. In twenty min- 
utes we had reaped a bundle of hay for Luggins' 
breakfast and in twenty more were nosing our 
way south over the dilapidations of an old logging 
road. 



CHAPTER III 

WE TRAVEL. NORTH BY SOUTH 

ALTHOUGH we were only a short distance 
out from North Creek, yet the routine of our 
travel was already set. Luggins understood that 
he was to demand drink of the frequent streamlets 
not more than once an hour. Lynn and I each 
carried a light pack basket for the chinaware and 
the extras. Luggins probably wished that we 
would carry more. 

When in the mood, we talked of all things under 
heaven and a few above it. But as often as not 
we would be silent for a league of woodland, the 
rhythm of the marching being sufficiently potent 
for one's dreams. We got along, as they say, 
beautifully. A sense that certain bounds of polite- 
ness must never be overstepped contributed. 
Also, life was so full of a number of things that 
we never felt circumscribed. There must have 
been crises, but we swallowed them, silent. And 
we never approached that impasse of pertinacity 
that breaks the relations of trappers or prospec- 
tors in greater solitudes for longer periods. 
Close travel for many weeks demands a fraternity 

46 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 47 

that is too intimate to be lightly entered upon. 
Yet to find a comrade for the long hike is worth 
many an experiment on shorter tours. The full 
savor of wild life can come only to those most 
happily bonded for their work in sun and rain. 

That night we camped by a little brook, called 
Silver on the map. It was a refreshing spot, 
though it would have been hideously lonely for 
just one person. It had been a lonely sort of day 
— a day shut in by forests of spruce and sugar- 
maple, birch and balsam. We had only the most 
occasional glimpses of the by-lying territory. We 
had journeyed, to be sure, upon a man-made road, 
but mosses softened the ancient ruts, and there 
was nothing else to show that human beings 
traversed the country twice a year. As we sat 
about our early supper not even a chipmunk in- 
fringed upon the stillness. The dimness dripped 
with the primeval. The occasion belonged clearly 
to the dryads. Tired with the long tramp, we let 
their solemnities seal the day for us in sleep. 

The next morning, after much refreshment, an 
ill-starred glance at the map suggested that we 
ascend nearby Dug Mountain for the outlook it 
would give us upon our neighbors. Leaving Lug- 
gins trying to conceal his satisfaction, we followed 
the thread of Silver to a deserted lumber camp. 
For half an hour we mounted a ridge, bore to the 
left, toiled under a feverish sun toward the elusive 



48 THE ADIRONDACKS 

summit. With each step upward we streamed 
more incontinently. When is a windfall not a 
windfall? When it 's in your way. A broad burn 
and the incline made progress an exacting tor- 
ment. Gravity and good sense bade us turn about. 
But, though it probably is a sign of unsound in- 
tellect, Lynn refused to be interviewed about re- 
considering the ascent. So after another brutal 
quarter of an hour we stood upon what may have 
been the summit. Although the eminence rises to 
upwards of three thousand feet we still had to 
climb a tree to get a view. 

The view was swathed in heat. Filling the 
whole west, stretched Indian Lake, slender and 
shining under the Snowy Eange. At the south 
gleamed Whittaker, and immediately below were 
three gemlets, called the Dug Mountain Ponds. 
We returned to Luggins by way of them. I be- 
lieve that they are being lumbered now. On one 
there was a grove of white pines rising into blue- 
green heights greater than I have seen elsewhere 
in the Park. Under them we gratefully ate a little 
lunch. We lay on the soft needles, listening to 
the soft stir of the wind and resting. It was a 
spot for tired bodies to soak up comfort, and for 
taut spirits to bathe in the securities of peace. 

Late in the afternoon, indeed so late that a 
round moon was rising over a round mountain, 
we entered Speculator. It is a comfortable place 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 49 

with white-painted houses and a long white inn, 
clamorous with children and their nurses. The 
village sits a little back from Lake Pleasant to 
have a view of Speculator Mountain, and, barring 
the children, seems void of animation. It is a 
day's stage from the railroad, old style, and at 
the very end of its street, as we found in conversa- 
tion with the post-office, begins a hinterland of 
trout and bear. 

But Speculator, despite the trout and the bear, 
presents itself to my memory as the paradise for 
children as our adventure with its lake attests. 
We had followed the street to the water's edge 
and then went along the water's edge for half a 
mile in order to screen the village from our view. 
On such a night we scorned hotel rooms and yet 
we were weary from the Dug Mountain climb of 
the morning. So we took few pains with our 
beds, fatally few. The full moon was caught by 
the lake in plains of glory. The noises from the 
village hushed one by one. Perfect night was 
about us, and the hills grew ghostly with moon- 
shine. But I w^as too tired. The occasional wake- 
fulness that assails one every so often in the woods 
struck home. I lay there in luxuries of light, but 
with barely a wink of sleep. The trip of the morn- 
ning seemed as part of a past lifetime. I began 
to look forward to the morning plunge. 

But in this lake designed for children it was 



50 THE ADIRONDACKS 

not to be. The water was insufferably shallow. 
The lake had a magnificent sand bottom, just the 
thing for wading, but the bottom had very little 
lake. We waded out and waded out. Yet it was 
only about one foot deep. Another hundred yards 
and Lynn sat down in desperation and began to 
pour the lake over him. Through the cold mists 
of dawn shapely mountains rose from the distant 
shores. To a person not affected with a zeal for 
diving it was a kindly scene. To us it was dis- 
appointing : delightful, horizontally, but vertically, 
childish. 

Although Lake Pleasant and Sacandaga, its 
twin, are surrounded by private holdings, there is 
much State land to the west and south for camp- 
ing and hunting. The elevations are not high, but 
the situations are charming, and the wilderness in 
which the Canada creeks take their rise is a wilder- 
ness indeed. There are no roads, no villages. 
Here and there is a sequestered shack built by 
the guides for the hunting season. In addition, 
there is something to hunt. 

For sheer joy in comfortable exploration one 
can stumble upon no more appetizing country than 
the richly wooded, high-shouldered, and well- 
watered slopes to the west of Piseco Lake. From 
an inciting eminence we looked upon these fields, 
so Elysian for wayfarers ; but as we were to make 
our incursions from another sallying-point, we 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 51 

desisted. We turned our backs upon Piseco, re- 
traced our steps to Speculator, replenished our 
stores for a future of unknown duration at a neat 
corner emporium, and quit the district by a long 
and upright road. 

The incline of the hill devoured the breath. 
But at the top we hovered a moment over as cheer- 
ing a panorama of cultivation and green fields as 
any man with a little farmer in the blood might 
travel fifty miles to see. Yet it held us only for 
a moment. The fresh and unknown wilderness 
lay before, and we gladly turned our backs upon 
the village with its church and fields. 

From sunny farm-house to unpainted shack, 
from shack to uninhabited clearing, from clearing 
to unfrequented wood, the road bore us, and the 
radiant morning permitted no sluggishness in 
thought or gait. It was difficult not to run and 
sing. Only the desire not to appear too ridicu- 
lous in Luggins' eyes prevented us. 

It was not going so well with all the world, 
however. Around a turn we came upon a Ford, 
stalled mid-hill, with three men in mackinaws in 
session about it. They looked upon our caval- 
cade with envy, I thought. Luggins was at least 
moving. A young Scandinavian was experiment- 
ing under the hood, and the two old Irishmen, 
gray of hair and quizzical of countenance, were 
engaged in thought. Machinery out of order was 



52 THE ADIRONDACKS 

as mucli of a temptation to Lynn as an Irishman 
was to me; so we stopped. 

They were in luck, for I wager there was no- 
body within the Park so good at an amateur 
autopsy as my companion. Unlike myself! I 
appreciate motoring. It is a gift of the gods like 
maple syrup and the new moon, something to be 
enjoyed as long as possible. But if it resolves 
itself into an argument of cylinders and mixtures, 
I am willing to have the bill sent in. I suspect, 
at times, that Lynn wants the things to give out 
just to enjoy the pleasures of resuscitation. I am 
only grateful that he takes Luggins for granted 
without a dissection. Perhaps it is because he is 
only one cylinder. 

Lynn's masterly motions and profound enjoy- 
ment awed the men in mackinaws. They regarded 
him with deference, and when he coaxed the first 
plaintive cadences and finally a continuous purr 
from the stalled brute, a relieved conversation 
broke out. They told us that they had been work- 
ing all winter on a large lumbering operation on 
Whittaker Lake. Large areas awaited cutting. 
We confided our route to them. They proposed a 
detour to their camp which promised interest. 
Then the Scandinavian took the wheel, and with a 
parting convulsion, they left us. Lynn looked 
after the clattering car until it had topped the 
rise, and for an instant I thought I detected long- 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 55 

ing in his gaze. But I did him an injustice. He 
set out after Luggins and me with his old appetite 
for the road undiminished, and when he caught 
up with us, he said a little wistfully : 

*'Do you suppose they are all like that? A 
lumber camp can't be any more romantic than a 
ranch. ' ^ 

Even so. The men of a lumber camp are mostly 
middle-aged and always tired. Their hours are 
long; they eat in silence, smoke in silence, sleep. 
If there ever was romance about their life, it has 
vanished. Wherever there is humanity, there is 
a story, but the cattle raiser and the wood-chopper 
of to-day bury it beneath slovenly surfaces. Yet 
there are camps in the Adirondacks, which we fell 
upon later, that proved cleanly as well as hospi- 
table, ambitious as well as hard-working. Gen- 
eralizations are not generous. 

We turned Luggins from his road of ease to 
follow the telephone wire as by direction. It led 
us through caverns of green giant beeches, with 
pyramids of the most succulent green boughs for 
their roofs. There were ancient pines that had 
been proud treelings when Henry Hudson was 
learning Dutch. Swarthy spruces and magnificent 
sugar-maples walled in the luxurious maze of our 
advance. Languid sunlight fell in places, but an 
eerie gloom increased. But the weather outside 
was distant as if outside a house. 



66 THE ADIRONDACKS 

After an hour through the somber forest, out 
we came upon some buildings beside a gray lake. 
The sky was filmed, the glorious blue of the morn- 
ing but a memory. In Wyoming we had never 
needed a tent in summer. In the Adirondacks no 
morning sky could foretell the evening. The 
weather was either a dazzling uncertainty or a 
drizzling certainty. Within fifteen minutes after 
our arrival upon Whittaker the mist curtain had 
descended upon the great, wooded shoulders of 
Dug Mountain. At the lumber house we were 
welcomed by the ''missus." She was much too 
thin and pale-eyed for a dweller in the palace of 
health. But the impending storm rather than her 
lean and hungry look decided us to hasten. We 
exaggerated about the size of our last meal, tele- 
phoned to Master Thomas, the friend whose camp 
we were aiming for, across the miles of wilder- 
ness, and were again engulfed in the afternoon 
shadows of the wood. 

For the first time on our trip all was not plain 
sailing. Master Thomas had explained our route 
with the neat science of a woods-traveler. He 
had told us to skirt Whittaker, follow a trail to 
the Jessup Eiver, proceed down the right bank 
to the entrance of Dug Mountain Brook, and wait 
there until he appeared with the launch. But 
the trail had been much defaced by lumbering 
operations; the sky was a seamless and dripping 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 57 

drab; our spirits had lost the impetus of break- 
fast and not yet felt the spur of an anticipated 
supper. We began to think of our despised lum- 
ber lunch with tenderness. 

Though hungry, we were not yet entirely in- 
sensible to the majestic woods. A fine rain had 
begun to fall. We heard it pattering upon the 
green roof, but we walked dry in somber cloisters 
as if in a different world. At length we came out 
into a natural clearing, very much like the wild 
meadows of the West, and doubtless beautiful to 
persons in a dry and well-fed condition. But to 
us it was a desert island. The trail led in, but 
none led out. Encumbered with Luggins, we 
dared not contemplate striking through to the Jes- 
sup by compass. We were marooned, and if in 
no danger of dying of thirst, we were in some 
peril of the opposite. Lynn remarked that he 
was going to restore the balance of power by 
getting some of the water inside him. So we set 
about making ourselves some tea while Luggins 
ate the juicy grass. It was as curious a party as 
I remember. 

Master Thomas appeared just as we were done. 
If I had been concocting this narrative, I could not 
have arranged his entrance more dramatically. 
To a stranger he was a quick, short, grizzled man, 
whose observations were interesting. To Lynn 
and me he had been an open-air comrade, a keen- 



68 THE ADIRONDACKS 

sighted counselor. Years before at school he had 
taught us algebra and animals, logarithms and 
love of the woods. Now, although his sons were 
older than we, he was still to be counted upon 
to furnish an active sympathy for our exploits. 

His first remark was typical. Instead of asking 
us why we were having afternoon tea by a 
drenched meadow like two Mad Hatters, he praised 
us for letting ourselves be so easily found. In a 
moment he had won Luggins for life by letting 
him nose a piece of maple sugar out of his coat 
pocket. Talking industriously about the trout 
fishing that he was going to show us, he led the 
way at a brisk pace to the dianesque cove wherein 
Dug Mountain Brook merged forever with the 
broadening Jessup. The motor-boat lay in wait, 
and Luggins justified our boast of his being the 
most versatile and best self-adjusting creature 
in existence by consenting to stand on the bottom. 

Indian Lake is a ribbon of water nine miles 
long and about a mile wide. At its upper end it 
divides. One three-mile branch lies in the Jes- 
sup River valley which was submerged when the 
dam was made. Above the slack water the little 
stream sparkles through woods to which the beaver 
have come back. Opposite the Dug Mountain 
Brook outlet lies a trail which takes one over to 
Mason Lake and the Miami River, a marvelous 
home of trout and beaver. If you follow the 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 59 

Miami's aldered curvings, you are at last en- 
tranced by the Sabbath beauties of Lewey Lake. 
It lies under the Snowy Range, sandy-beached and 
forest-shored. It empties into Indian's other 
arm, and if you paddle around the long point and 
up through the beautiful rocky passage crowned 
with beeches, you will find the sequestered camp 
called Back Log. Thither our conglomerate 
launch load was tending. You will have to screen 
for yourself the drama of our reception : two wan- 
derers, tired and wet and hungry, a patient pack- 
horse, some hospitable hand-shakings, a tent to 
dress in before which a full-tongued fire licked at 
a giant birch-log, premonitions of an imminent 
meal in the air. Camping has two rewards, nay, 
three: the anticipation, the time being, and the 
afterward. 

Indian Lake makes as fine a forest headquarters 
as the Adirondacks afford. Wooded shores rise 
on all sides, and to the north on the fairest days 
the Marcy Mountains show blue. Snowy, with its 
attendants, fairly gluts the west, and Kunjamuk 
lords it in melancholy to the east. At the north- 
ern end of the lake a small cottage colony has 
built ; the remainder of the hundred miles of shore 
line is State land. Unfortunately the water is 
partly drawn off on dry seasons, leaving an un- 
sightly residuum of logs and stumps. But there 
is always enough liquid left to float the enormous 



60 THE ADIRONDACKS 

pickerel. Elijah would never have needed to call 
in the ravens if he had struck Indian Lake with a 
pickerel spoon. The in-flowing streams are scat- 
teringly inhabited by trout. It is a hospitable 
wilderness. Little ponds lie back from the big 
lake. And some of these, Crotched and Johnny 
Mack and Round, left in our memories some inti- 
mate scenes to be cherished. 

It began to rain, at first steadily from the east, 
and then impartially from every part of the com- 
pass. And then we were vouchsafed a morning 
of crystal and blue that shouted, ** Snowy!" in 
our ears. 

I shall be all my life deciding, I suppose, 
whether it be better to hustle about the world and 
see the sights, with a sort of understanding, of 
course; or to master the ravines and hillocks of 
one domestic neighborhood ; whether it be nearer 
living to worship before Fuji-yama and the Mat- 
terhorn or to know well the intricacies and secrets 
of a single vale. It is a rending decision. Will 
you have star-spaces or flowers in the crannied 
wall? 

Snowy is the sort of mountain that is negligible 
in size, when compared with your Mt. McKinleys 
— negligible, that is, except to the one carrying bed 
and lodging up him. He is commonplace for looks, 
compared with the Gothic splendors of the Alps. 
He fronts you with a bold precipice or two. He 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 61 

rises out of decent woods. He scorns to lure with 
any waterfall of particulars. Yet Snowy has his 
moods, his beauties, his sternnesses, and the hearts 
of those who know him. 

We set out, Master Thomas leading. For 
thirty minutes the trail kept a decent sense of 
direction under great trees, and then took to the 
brook. Up the brook we scrabbled on inclined 
slabs of mother rock till a wall, a few hundred 
feet high, sets one to the right. Another half 
hour, sufficiently upright to borrow all one 's wind, 
and there was the fire warden's cabin. A little 
turn and we were out on top. 

To scale Gibraltar is a matter you would never 
heed with Master Thomas guiding. He takes you 
on with a short step. Under his shrewd brow 
shine shrewd eyes that miss nothing of the con- 
tour of the country. It is he that points out our 
first fawn. It is he that finds the rare flower. 
Evening camps with him are a feast of woodlore 
and a flow of soul as well. The sharpness in those 
eyes is mainly humor and twinkle. For resource 
and wisdom he is the wiry woodmaster of us all. 

We found the fire warden seizing the fair day 
to mend his housekeeping. Can hermits think? 
Or have they just the two gratifications : reading 
last month's magazine and not being struck by 
lightning? This man, spare and forty-five, whose 
muscles had been hardened by the log-drive and 



62 THE ADIRONDACKS 

who was taking the rest cure — was he becoming 
just another part of the azure, drenched wonder- 
land about him? Or did the gales that fell upon 
his cabin drive him to deep thought? Does the 
crawling stuffiness of the office-holder or the wide- 
ness of blown horizons conjure the greater vision 
of the universe? It is impossible to divine di- 
rectly, and I am afraid my warden would not have 
told me no matter how obliquely I had pressed 
the question. 

From the summit of Snowy an amazing expanse 
of forest-land falls away. Only to the east is 
much water seen. There the whole length of In- 
dian lies white at one's feet. In the distance a 
few ponds glimmer, but only as foam laces wide- 
rolling combers. You breathe in relief to realize 
that, despite fire and pillage, there are such 
stretches of forest left. 

In every view that is to refresh the memory 
there must remain one chief delight. And from 
Snowy it is not the tumble of green rollers, not 
even the timber blanket that I would climb to see 
most of all. There is a little ledge on the western 
side from which the slope swoops down into a 
perfect amphitheater. The soaring sides sink 
evenly to rest. From the ledge the arms of moun- 
tains appear to enclose it. Storms cannot harry 
it. The sun nestles into it. Quiet, driven from 
everywhere else, may sleep there. Even the frost 



WE TRAVEL NORTH BY SOUTH 63 

leaves it for its last and most enchanting prey. 
Long did we lie on the moss of the ledge, steep- 
ing in the sunshine, and the calm of the marvelous 
bowl below. It was a vision of serenity worth 
far greater struggle to attain. We forgot, for the 
moment, that we were on a planet that was mad. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CEDAR EIVER COUNTRY 

THERE is no mortal doubt that a fisherman 
will sacrifice himself and everybody else for 
his fish. Ask a fisherman what epitaph to write 
for him, and even if he has been a grand duke 
or a bard, I will wager my new rod that he would 
secretly prefer to have ^'Good Fisherman" carved 
upon the final stone. 

Consequently, when Master Thomas looked 
down into the wooded country west of Snowy and 
traced the number of virgin streams upon the 
map, it was quickly decided that we would make 
a sortie upon the trout. The calendar was to be 
thrown to the winds ; enough food was to be lashed 
upon Luggins to ameliorate any hard luck. Like 
Moses, we descended from the mountain with a 
glowing countenance. 

Tliere were two avenues of attack from our 
base at Back Log. Lynn and Master Thomas 
were to go around by Indian Lake Village with 
Luggins and come in by the Cedar River to a 
junction of three streams on the Little Moose 
River. That was a two days' trip. Thornton, 

64 



THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 65 

Master Thomas' son, and I were to take the tent, 
cross the range, and have camp ready. Every- 
body was suited. 

Thornton is a man of muscle, with a mind of 
parts. It is a good combination for wood travel. 
We set out under the shining skies at dawn with 
gaiety. He carried the tent, a blanket, axes; I 
bore the food for three meals, a blanket, and the 
fishing rods. He had the weight, I the vexation. 
One cannot walk too carefully with rods. 

The day warmed to our efforts. We spent much 
time looking for the blazes that should lead us to 
Squaw Brook. To add to the humor of the trip 
tall nettles stung us with animation. We further 
strained our habit of politeness by momently in- 
creasing the distance from breakfast. But by 
noon we had reached the Squaw, a cheerful brook 
on the farther side of Snowy, and within a flick 
of a fly some trout were sizzling in the pan. Thus 
does barbarism uphold convention by fortifying 
the amenities by a square meal. 

It was well that we began that afternoon with 
confidence, for before sundown we were to endure 
every annoyance of the inhabitable wilderness 
short of breaking our necks. 

The series began promptly with a corduroy 
road. Forswear such. A corduroy road is a suc- 
cession of slippery tree trunks laid side by side 
to complicate walking over places already natu- 



66 THE ADIRONDACKS 

rally impassable. It undoubtedly does prevent 
the teams of lumbermen from sinking out of sight 
in the mire, and in certain stages of time and 
tide a corduroy is an aid. But this one down the 
Squaw had been laid in legendary times. The 
logs were rotted to a degree that made each step 
a surmise. And if the surmise proved incorrect, 
you broke your leg. Above, raspberry bushes of 
unheard of virility entwined in handsome pro- 
fusion. Decomposed bridges aggravated the 
crossings of the stream. And the monotony of 
our progress was playfully diversified by the sur- 
mounting of fallen trees at intervals. There was 
three miles of this. 

We were now in the heart of the wilderness. 
Hard wood and soft wood rose in a magnificent 
forest which was intermingled with little under- 
growth except upon our road. Twice we passed 
great beaver dams. From one Master Thomas 
had once taken thirty legal trout, stopping only 
because he had enough. But we resisted that 
temptation. 

We found the Cedar Eiver basking in the 
golden sunlight of mid-afternoon and the spot 
recommended itself for rest. The shallow stream 
ran between grassy banks from which the serried 
spruces had retreated a few rods. A delicious 
breeze blew down from the open sky. But I dis- 
covered that I had left my ax half a mile back 



THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 67 

at the last crossing, which had been particularly 
complicated. So while Thornton rested, I re- 
traced my leaps over the corduroy. This only 
tended to emphasize my previous impressions of 
it. 

But in the woods aggravations are only skin- 
deep. Fatigue passes soon while the beauty is 
eternal. As we pushed deeper and deeper into 
the uninhabited, past trials grew vague in the 
green oblivion, and our conversation again took 
on the detached manners of the content. 

So, I suppose, it was really due to the discus- 
sion of Hindenburg's ethics or some such sub- 
limated topic that we missed the trail. All I know 
is that we had gone on much longer than we ought 
and that my pack was asserting its existence when 
we discovered that it was only a deer trail that 
we were following. In the fading day the woods 
were doubtless more beautiful than ever. But it 
was a beauty unidentified with either food or 
shelter. We ignored it. 

Of course we weren't lost. We were merely 
where we shouldn't have been, without knowing 
where that was. We sat down on a log to lay 
plans and to rest the gnats which had been over- 
exerting themselves to keep up. Curiously enough 
the stimulus of being play-lost had banished my 
fatigue. I was good for twenty miles, now, bar 
corduroy. Prudence signaled retreat, but we 



68 THE ADIRONDACKS 

knew what was behind ; we did not know what lay 
before. The sun was presumably still making for 
the west, although the indications made it out 
northeast. 

Blessed are the docile for they do not get lost. 
It is only the stubborn who try to buck the com- 
pass. We couldn't understand why the sun 
should want to set in the northeast after all these 
years of the other thing, but as we still enjoyed 
the use of our intelligences we set out after him. 
And this proves that we weren't lost. The sun 
might set in the zenith without disturbing a lost 
man or making him pause. 

Twilight was encroaching. Nevertheless, we de- 
cided to go on for half an hour before looking 
for a camp-site. Within five minutes we had ex- 
perienced all the sensations of Balboa on his peak 
in Darien, for at the foot of a slope twinkled the 
waters of a lovely lake, and at its farther end 
stood a cabin from which rose the blue smoke of 
a new wood fire. Doubtless the cabin was lost, 
too, for by our map it clearly should not have been 
there. But we were in a condition to accept it 
and no questions asked. 

But how to reach it awaited solution. To our 
right a promontory promised hard walking. To 
our left a stream had to be forded. We chose a 
wetting rather than more promenade. 

The stream was deeper than we judged, thanks 



THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 69 

to the indiscriminate industries of some beaver. 
The beaver is the self-made man of the forest and, 
I suppose, is held up to the children of the forest 
as such. But it is a dangerous example. 

We came through wet to the arms and too weary 
for remark, only to encounter a labyrinth of alder. 
My spirits had been drowned in the dam. Dis- 
tance was no longer enchanting, but downright 
painful. I had grown slippery. I fell and broke 
my arm, or almost did. Thornton laughed. So 
did I. There comes a time when the multiplicity 
of discomforts lies too deep for tears. 

A half hour of this brought us opposite the 
cabin. The lake stretched around a bend for un- 
believable distances. There was nothing to it but 
to swim across or to make them hear. We yelled, 
and no one appeared. We waded out and yelled 
again. It was a lovely evening. But the black 
flies were gormandizing upon our persons. We 
yelled. Presently a Christian emerged from the 
cabin and yelled back. Whatever he may have 
thought of human noises issuing from two am- 
phibians, he lost no time in speculation. Within 
ten minutes we were dredged up into his boat, so 
to speak, and in twenty more were eating flap- 
jacks and maple syrup out of his hand. The lake 
was Little Moose. 

If those gentlemen who took us in plied us with 
towers of hot cakes and yards of trout, and shared 



70 THE ADIRONDACKS 

their cabin and their clothes and their all without 
so much as a hidden smirk at the dazzling clown- 
ishness of onr entrance — if those gentlemen should 
ever see this account, I hope they will realize again 
more directly than we could tell them, our appre- 
ciation of their hospitality. And not only that, 
but the great and impersonal service they rendered 
the law of the woods. At one time the Adiron- 
dacks seemed likely to become the private pre- 
serve of a few wealthy men, whose embargo upon 
stream and woodland was changing the prevailing 
spirit of good-fellowship into the bitterness of 
exile. Armed wardens, **no trespass" signs, un- 
necessary selfishness, aroused opposition, poach- 
ing, malice. The generosity of frontier life was 
speedily converted into suspicion and retaliation. 
The crisis came in murder and burning. And as 
quickly it subsided because of a change of front 
on the part of the capitalists and the State's ac- 
quiring a good deal of territory. The reaction is 
now complete. Campers are welcome anywhere. 
Permissions can be obtained for anything reason- 
able on the small holdings not already thrown 
promiscuously open. But best of all, the give and 
take, the natural hospitality has returned to stay. 
The stranger is cordially received and helped upon 
his way in the fashion of the remoter West. Our 
hosts were generous examples of the new spirit. 
Little Moose Lake, encircled by forest and pro- 



^ i'l 




H" (-A: 






THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 73 

tected by little mountains, is a spot to dream on. 
Deer come at dawn and dusk. Birds sing in the 
clearing. A spring issues near the one cabin. 
And from the cold lake flows a river filled with 
trout. If I did not feel that some reward was 
due the person who has read as far as this, Little 
Moose should remain undivulged. But I am re- 
assured by the certainty that only the deserving 
will take the trouble to hie them thither. 

Sleep washed away fatigue and the sting of 
past mistakes, and we awoke to the early beauty 
of an upland summer. It is astonishing how com- 
plete recuperation is in the free air. In the Great 
North Woods each day begins with a clean page, 
no matter how blotted the one before. The most 
complicated miseries untangle in a night, open to 
balsam healing, and good food and coffee revise 
untoward views of life. We blessed the mis- 
chances that had brought us to such a pitch of 
satisfaction, and we felt as if we had partly re- 
paid our hosts who were leaving for Indian Lake 
by warning them of the corduroy. 

As luck had it, our wanderings had been in the 
right direction, and lunch time saw us well down 
the right bank of Moose River, past Butter Brook 
and over a smaller unnamed stream which we 
christened Oleo with its own waters. We crossed 
Silver and were at the rendezvous. It was va- 
cation ground for Diana. Three streams united 



74 THE ADIRONDACKS 

to increase the Moose. It seemed as if no person 
had ever passed that way, so silent, so remote lay 
the sunny spaces. A generation ago some lum- 
bermen cut out the hemlock. But it was a triumph 
for sensible cutting, and how different from the 
usual despoiling of timberland! As Lynn once 
remarked when we were confronted by a desolated 
tract, 

''There 's a place for every lumber-hog, and 
every lumber-hog should be in his place. ' ' Lynn 
is not often profane. 

Making camp in such a situation was an easy 
enterprise, and our camp, we flattered ourselves, 
should be more than a sop to the human instinct 
for a place to sleep. We had sheltered sunlight 
for the tent-site, balsam for the bed, firewood for 
all hours, a rill to drink from, a pool to plunge 
in, and a fisher's paradise radiating in three di- 
rections. 

As the day waned we found ourselves listening 
for our partners. Shadows crept from the forest, 
the spruce spires glowed and went out. We pre- 
pared supper, and still they did not come. Night 
crouched about the fire, and many a time we 
thought that we heard our names when it was only 
the brook sounding through the stillness, the rip- 
ples breaking into consciousness. 

Since both Lynn and Master Thomas were so 
wood-wise, we felt no alarm, and yet when we 



THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 75 

heard an unmistakable shouting and saw them 
leading Luggins by the aid of a birch torch, we 
were relieved. There is more in the night forest 
than is dreamt of in any of our philosophies.' 

It was a tired, but triumphant quartet that rested 
in the balsam. And Luggins' old white face 
peered solemnly upon us, without comment, but 
obviously as of one who is digesting a new ex- 
perience. He appeared ruminative, as if adding 
another to the memory of an already richly varied 
list of catastrophes. But Luggins was to have 
his reward. For the next five days we moored 
him upon a grassy island where he ate and 
dreamed delectably. At the end of the day he was 
glad to see us back from our excursions down the 
stream. Once he tried to tell us that he had 
smelled a bear. We found the tracks in the sand 
above our camp. But, all in all, the inertia of the 
life was beyond his criticism. Existence, for the 
moment, was justified. 

And so was it for us. We were now utterly 
freed from the odor of our costermonger lives. 
Freedom was our plaything. Whether it was the 
forest spell or the mending of one's outfit, every 
sensation was vivid. We laid out long explora- 
tions for ourselves just to show that liberty should 
not make us soft. And on one of these we discov- 
ered Otter Brook. 

Otter lies to the east of Little Moose, an hour's 



76 THE ADIRONDACKS 

travel for you who can keep the sun on the proper 
shoulder, but a year's wandering for those who 
will not mind their way. It is a stream of rocky 
reaches and great pools. The pools harbor some 
very large and proud trout who mutiny except 
under the command of the master angler. The 
conditions that fish propose before allowing them- 
selves to be caught are preposterous. It is an art 
of pretense on both sides. But down the Otter 
there are other attractions if the fish remain per- 
verse. First you travel along a diminutive can- 
yon, and then suddenly the forest flattens out, 
stops, and you are out upon a natural meadow that 
lies greener than memories of Ireland. The for- 
est rolls up the slopes of distant mountains, but 
before you, in extravagances of quiet and sun- 
light, the plains widen along the stream. And in 
a little while the Otter has joined the Moose. 

The fact that there are a dozen other Otters and 
a dozen other Mooses in the Adirondacks cannot 
take the charm from this first of our discovery. 
It is a living matter of irritation, nevertheless, 
that the names of the myriad ponds should not be 
sorted out and shuffled a little better. The lakes 
and mountains were named by settlers who could 
have no ideas of the nomenclature prevailing in 
other places. When somebody killed a bear by a 
lake, the slaughter was commemorated by naming 
the water after the event. As there were a good 



THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 77 

many bears, there grew to be a good many Bear 
Ponds. There are six or seven now in the Adi- 
rondack Park. There are ten Clear Ponds, a 
dozen Wolf 's, and fifteen Long ones. Deer Ponds, 
Pine Lakes, and the other inevitables flourish by 
the fives and tens. These cease to be names ; they 
become disguises. 

Of course it is rare that we come upon a region 
like Glacier Park ready and waiting to be chris- 
tened by a geographical board. But there are 
beauties in the Adirondacks, quieter perhaps, but 
as suggestive as the proud title-bearers of Gun- 
sight Pass and Two Medicine Lake, and it is a 
loss to everybody that their name is Mud. There 
are a dozen such. 

Many places in the Adirondacks have names 
of distinction and some of charm — Massawepie, 
Raquette, Canachagala, Boreas, Crotched, Bona- 
parte, Joe Indian Pond, Honnedaga, Nehasane, 
Middle Brother Pond, Witchapple, Vly, T Lake, 
Nameless Creek, Squaw Brook, Paradox, Poke O' 
Moonshine — all these and some others have a per- 
sonality that a succession of North Ponds neces- 
sarily relinquishes. 

I have a conundrum. If you called Niagara, 
Johnson Falls, would its beauty be as great to 
you? Would you not rather date your letters 
from Witchapple than from Mud Pond? 

Perhaps when the Conservation Commission has 



78 THE ADIRONDACKS 

made sure of all its real estate, and the timber, 
it may begin to conserve the beautiful heritage of 
Indian names that is fading from memory and the 
books. The sainted aborigines were the first 
American poets, and they deserve their Westmin- 
sters. 

Strange to say the mountains fared better than 
the lakes. I dare say because there were so many 
of them that the average settler got discouraged ; 
or his thoughts were so much more interested in 
his potato crop that he had little time to lift up his 
eyes unto the hills. He never climbed for either 
the altitude or the view. Discrimination was not 
necessary. Hence, instead of clumps of Blues and 
Greens over the landscape we have Wolf Jaws, 
Hurricane, Ampersand, Noon-Mark. These have 
nobility. 

Those early summer days with Master Thomas 
and Thornton on the upper waters of the Moose 
pass my ability to mirror. The season had lost 
none of the delicacy of spring ; the country was a 
fountain-land of life. Deer would step with care 
and grace down the rocky banks to drink. Wild 
ducks hustled their broods to safety. Beaver 
abounded ; foxes barked ; we knew that there was 
at least one bear in our vicinity. There was a 
largeness about the woods and the days that was 
satisfying. It was also disturbing. We longed 
to expand to it ; we could not in full. Of the night 



THE CEDAR RIVER COUNTRY 79 

fires and philosophies, of the reticence and frank- 
ness nothing can be said, for the same tongue does 
not tell the dream and the interpretation thereof. 
On a morning threatening thunder we broke 
camp. Master Thomas and his son were to re- 
turn to Back Log for expected guests. Lug- 
gins, who had been belly-deep in the present for 
over-long, was to have his nose turned smartly to 
the future in company with Lynn's and mine. 
We saw our companions over Oleo and Butter 
dry-shod, and then, making sad jests, we parted. 
The idea of a "book was now firm within us, and 
there was much country to be seen. 



CHAPTER V 

THE ADIKONDACK FOKEST 

A POET loves the forest most, a camper al- 
ways, a lumberman for keeps. The great 
mantle of the Adirondack Mountains serves them 
all. 

The goal of our desire, I remember, was to find 
ourselves in the forest primeval. We were al- 
ways for pushing on into some denser growth 
that was indubitably primeval. So when we 
found that without knowing it we had spent a 
good part of a week in woods that had never been 
lumbered, we were considerably chagrined. We 
had expected, I suppose, a barricade of trees, so 
dark as to be eternal night, where gigantic trunks 
grew so close together that you could barely 
squeeze between. 

But the primeval forest is far different. The 
original covering of the Adirondack slopes boasts 
occasional great trees, but they grow far apart. 
There is little undergrowth, though a wealth of 
moss and fern. Slash, burn, and thickets do not 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 83 

exist. There is a timelessness about it that new 
woods cannot assume. It is a magnificent sight 
or an interesting sight or a rare sight, depending 
upon whether you are intent on fashioning these 
trees into hexameters or backlogs or two-inch 
boards. 

The artist sees a wonderland dripping with 
shades of green and gray and gold, roofed with 
spires and domes and black-groined arches, floored 
with the wildest profusion of ferned rocks and 
moss-grown trunks. He remembers it fragrant 
with the damp of twilight, alluring with its 
glimpses of dim aisles, silent always, always 
strange. He goes his way. 

The camper finds it a spectacle for admiration 
and for groans. He responds to the fact of its 
greatness, but finds it not the most useful for his 
purpose. It is too wet, too large, too empty. 
But he returns. 

The lumberman sees board-feet. He calculates 
great currencies moldering for lack of the ax. 
He regrets the moneys that stand unminted. The 
poet was melancholy by reason of the dim vast- 
ness and decay. The woodman's sadness is less 
vague. He realizes that but for the law he would 
have the land denuded in a winter. And when 
he has his will there is nothing to return to. 

Of the forest that once covered the entire north 
about seventy thousand acres remain in the Park. 



84 THE ADIRO-NDACKS 

Seventy thousand acres come to about one third 
the Adirondack lake surface. Most of it is in the 
Essex County preserves; a little lies to the west 
of the railroad and the rest to the south of Indian 
Lake. 

Of the rest of the park about one million four 
hundred thousand acres have been lumbered, but 
are covered with second or third growths. One 
hundred and twenty thousand acres are utterly 
denuded. More will still go, unfortunately, as 
the lumber companies hold twenty-three per cent, 
of all the Park land, and it is their rather short- 
sighted policy to take as much wood as possible 
and then let the land revert to the State for taxes. 
Of course in thirty years new trees can grow to 
a certain fullness if forest fires do not damage 
the soil beyond the repair of centuries. But 
thirty years is a generation. 

These million and a half timbered acres would 
cover half of Connecticut. They offer a dozen 
kinds of trees in abundance, and a score of others 
scattered in small quantities. Besides this wealth 
of variety, numberless species of mosses, grasses, 
weeds, shrubs, and water-plants make the region 
a botanist's happy hunting ground. 

In all this territory the white pine once reigned 
supreme. Within the Park boundaries now, how- 
ever, it has sunk to fourth place in importance, 
and the new blister threatens to sweep it from the 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 85 

land as thoroughly as the chestnut has been swept 
from the Middle States. Of white pine standing, 
there remain seventy-five-million board feet. 

The nearer it draws to the fate of the buffalo, 
the grander this tree seems, growing a diameter 
of over three feet, a height of more than fifty. 
Far off you can tell this magnificent tree by the 
droop of the long branches, and near at hand its 
five-fingered leaf bunches will make you sure. 
Beneath it the ground is always soft with needles, 
and above, its blue-green depths are always speak- 
ing with the winds. In some of the preserves 
magnificent groves of white pine are to be found. 
The trees on the Dug Mountain Ponds were glori- 
ous monarchs. To live in such company was to 
breath nobility. 

The yellow pine in the Adirondacks is of in- 
ferior quality and lacks the patrician look of its 
white lord. As camper's fuel the pines are only 
fair, burning quickly to dead ashes. 

Among the noblemen of the ancient wood the 
hemlock ranks high. There is about ten times 
as much of this left as of the white pine, but 
as it has been coveted and cut for wood and bark 
and root its days are numbered. The hemlock 
can easily be told from the other evergreens by 
the short flat leaves and firm-textured bark. Its 
shape and color mark it for appreciation. In the 
sunlight it takes on a soft, blue-green beauty that 



86 THE ADIRONDACKS 

lends mystery to its dignity. Its fate is the 
leather tannery. The wood is hard to split. 

Of all the conifers the spruce is the most numer- 
ous in the park. Two and a half billion board- 
feet still stand, despite the ravages of recurring 
pests and the perpetual pulp-wooder. There is 
no difficulty in telling the spruce, because its spiny 
leaves spiral about the branches and bristle 
thickly from the parent shaft. Its dark lances 
spike the air and on a winter day seem to stand 
like a cohort of centurions, with javelins ready. 
In the spring new tips of a delicious green spring 
from the end of every branch and relieve the 
ascetic appearance for a while. But the fresh- 
ness soon passes, and the tree darkens into its 
habitual severity. Like most of the other soft- 
woods, for a camper's fire spruce is scarcely 
worth cutting. 

To all woodsmen the balsam is a friendly tree. 
Green, it will not burn, and seasoned, it burns 
too rapidly. But for generations of tired bodies 
it has furnished a soft and scented bed. It is 
easy to know. Its leaves are a little longer and 
broader than the spruce, and they do not grow 
around the stem, as do those of the spruce, but lie 
flat. They are lighter on the under side, and 
from them flows the odor of eternal youth. Not a 
billion board-feet remain within the Park. 

Three other evergreens, the tamarack of the 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 87 

swamp, the arbor-vitas of the lake shore, and the 
red cedar, are present in appreciable quantities. 
Tamarack is excellent for backlogs and burns very 
slowly when green. Cedars burn to dead coals 
with considerable crackling. 

The North Woods contain four and a half bil- 
lion feet of soft woods and three and a quarter 
billion of hard, of which the birches, maples, 
beech, and poplar bulk the largest. 

The white birch is the Adirondackcr's chief 
reliance. There are few ponds along which it 
may not be found, growing in groups of threes 
and sevens; and one does not travel far in the 
deep wood without coming upon great ancestral 
trunks which are producing the best wet-weather 
tinder in the world. No storm is so protracted 
that some layer of the oily bark may not be found 
to burn, no situation so depressing that its sure 
aid for fire or shelter or canoe cannot relieve. 
Men have rescued themselves from nocturnal sit- 
uations with the help of birch torches, boiled 
water in kettles of its bark, patched their worn 
foot-gear, or housed themselves in broad rippings 
from big trunks. 

For burning, the yellow birch is better than 
its more spectacular white sister, and it even 
burns more vigorously green than dry. The 
black birch, much rarer than either, is the best 
of all. It does not claim superficial connection 



88 THE ADIRONDACKS 

with its family, the bark resembling cherry, but 
its leaf gives it away. All three kinds split well. 
The white birch sticks — it is the winter occupa- 
tion of the entire mountain region to cut and stuff 
them into stoves — look good enough to eat. About 
three quarters of a billion board-feet remain. 

Of all the maples the sugar-maple leads in serv- 
ice and number and size. From the first it has 
been the homestead's friend. The maple has 
a sickly sound to us who are accustomed to the 
red and rubbishy specimens of our city streets. 
But to enter a great grove of sugar-trees is to 
renounce all prejudice. 

The sugar-maple is known by its smaller leaf 
and larger bole. Although the maple family has 
no aristocracy of form, yet sometimes a sugar- 
tree will rise over a hundred feet and spread with 
a gigantic sweep. In the fall it glows in a red 
mound of color. Its wood makes fair fuel for the 
boiling of its sap. 

In the northern Adirondacks the last week of 
a normal March sees groups of men and girls 
betake themselves to the sugar groves for the 
first festival of the year. The snow lies a foot 
or two deep in the forest ; but during the forenoon 
and early afternoon the sun shines warm enough 
to set the sap running. At night the frost re- 
turns. It is this weather of alternate freeze and 
thaw that the country-side has waited for. Each 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 89 

tree over seven inches has been tapped with an 
iron spout on which hangs a pail. On good days 
the colorless, sweetish water drips constantly and 
fills the buckets faster than they can be collected 
from a grove of five hundred trees. A boy with 
a sledge, on which is a great container, drives 
around and collects the sap which is put into an 
evaporator. A fire drives off the water vapor, 
and as the sap runs down from vessel to vessel 
it slowly thickens. Before the scientific age, a 
great iron kettle did the whole trick, but less 
quickly, and the product was darker colored. 

Presently the sap is taken into the shack and 
put in a flat receptacle on the stove. It bubbles 
over the birch fire like a lake of molasses taffy, 
and as it thickens the master sugar-man anxiously 
tests it in the snow. By this time the neighbors 
have been summoned, for this is the sugaring-off 
and very much of an occasion. At last the syrup 
is taken off the fire and stirred; little pans are 
filled with snow and each sweet-tooth sits about 
with one on his lap. A spoonful of the amber 
stuff is poured on the snow. It hardens instantly 
and is devoured as soon. There is no confection 
so pure, so delicate, so Edenish. There is no 
sociability so natural and so sincere as that which 
it instigates. 

The warm syrup is strained through a piece 
of felt, and the dark remnant, called the sugar- 



90 THE ADIRONDACKS 

sign, is thrown away. The strained part is boiled 
again if sugar and not syrup is desired, and is put 
into molds to cool. In a fair year a tree will 
yield fifty quarts of sap, which boils down into 
two quarts of syrup, which makes one pound of 
sugar. This retails at twenty or at most twenty- 
five cents a pound. But as the sugar season 
comes at the time of least outdoor activity and 
as the utensils need be no more elaborate than 
one can afford, the industry still appeals to every 
one who retains a drop of colonial blood within 
his veins. 

To Lynn and myself the circumstance of our 
first sugaring-off savored of the olden homespun 
days. We had been staying with LeGrand Hale 
in upper Keene Valley, and when the invitation 
went round that Mr. Lamb was to have a sugar- 
ing-off, we were included with that uncomputing 
hospitality of the big woods. From the little 
shack high on the hills the view swept in cloudy 
grandeur across the noble valley. Inside, around 
the stove, sat a dozen of the admirable : Mr. Hale, 
old, but straight and strong; the host, generous 
and jolly; his daughter, busy and gifted with an 
unlearned art of ease and modesty before these 
many men ; George Beede, type of frontier youth, 
healthy and strong; other young fellows, quiet 
among their elders and before strangers, but with 
adventure lurking in their eyes. Blood never 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 91 

spoke more surely. It is such stock as this that 
will perpetuate the American tradition. 

But to climb down from the sugar-maple, there 
is an insignificant and useless member of the fam- 
ily that thrives on wet land, called the swamp 
maple. But it claims one moment of the year. 
Late in August or early in September it flames 
for a brief day in scarlet, or vermilion. It is the 
first figure of the autumn pageant. There are 
three birches to the maple's one, the estimated 
board-feet being but a quarter billion. 

Beech comes in a billion strong. Its smooth 
trunk of delicate gray, its exquisite foliage, and 
its burnability make it a favorite. Along with 
the sugar-maple and the rare hickory, it is an 
almost faultless fuel. When the beech goes, the 
wild animals will go, too, for there is scarcely 
one from the bear or the deer down to the chip- 
munk that does not depend upon its mast. In 
the autumn its gold and brown, and later its faded 
whiteness, are matters of distinction. The beech 
is an aristocrat. 

The poplar, on the other hand, is essentially 
vulgar. It overtops most of the forest, though 
as yet it does not overtotal many species. It 
grows rank, blooms with a coarse flower, and de- 
cays into the yellow leaf early in the autumn, 
leaving a tall-boled awkward skeleton. Poplar is 
probably good for many things, but it burns worse 



92 THE ADIRONDACKS 

than wet balsam when green. When dry, how- 
ever, it is a fuel not to be despised. 

The other trees of the Adirondacks do not grow 
in merchantable quantities. Alder is everywhere 
along the streams and it makes a good fire for 
a short stopping, but never grows to any great 
size. A scattering of oaks and basswood appears 
in the south where winds and birds have carried 
them. But nature's first idea was best, and to- 
day great quantities of the soft woods are being 
set out from the nurseries. Two million trees are 
planted every year. 

At the outset there were three mortal conflicts 
that had to be waged by the Conservation Commis- 
sion on a hundred fronts. The great park forest 
had to be protected from fire ; the holdings of the 
lumber companies had to be protected from in- 
discriminate spoliation; the desert lands had to 
be reclaimed by plantings of many million trees, 
or some day not only all the fertility would be 
washed into the sea, but the water supply of the 
immense cities to the south would be endangered. 

It takes thousands of years to make a soil, hun- 
dreds of years to grow a tree, and half an hour 
to destroy both utterly by fire. When the Com- 
mission came into power, the danger was en- 
croaching upon the last stands of original forest. 
In Michigan four billion board-feet of timber had 
just gone up in one conflagration. Farther west 



. THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 93 

whole Rhode Islands had been devastated in 
single fires. Railroads, cigarette-droppers, fish- 
ermen, malice, had combined to start one holocaust 
before the last was extinguished. In 1903, 688 
fires, doing damage to the known extent of 
$864,082, burning 464,189 acres, and costing 
$153,763 to put out, were started, chiefly by care- 
lessness. The Commission erected fire stations, 
cut fire lanes, paid fifty wardens to be on duty 
on mountain-tops with spy-glass and telephone, 
from the spring thaw till the autumn rains. This 
is the tale of their success. In 1914 there were 
413 fires. But these were all extinguished for 
$13,978 before they had burned more than 13,837 
acres to the tune of $14,905. During one summer 
the railroads were the cause of 120 fires, fisher- 
men 125, hunters 90, smokers 220. It will require 
better spark arresters on engines, increased care 
among sportsmen, and more watchers before the 
double evil of the forest fire will be abolished. 

The civic conscience grows so slowly that it 
is always worth while repeating the known, but 
undigested, fact that a forest fire burns the candle 
at both ends. The wood not only goes ; the woods 
to come can never be. The seedlings, the seeds, 
and the soil are licked up ; the unconsumed earth 
washes away; rivers are choked; droughts deepen 
in intensity, and floods double in violence; and 
the farmer, the paper user, the furniture-maker. 



94 THE ADIRONDACKS 

and those who burn wood for fuel pay the in- 
demnity. It is a tragic sequence. Yet it occurs 
because we never accept a fact until it begins to 
grab at our bank roll. This fact is edging up. 

The Commission found that an unprotected for- 
est was in as bad a way as an unprotected bank, 
subject to pillage and destruction. When the ex- 
perts began to figure on the cost of protection 
they found, luckily, that the balance was on the 
proper side. The fifty wardens were not intended 
to conserve just an unproductive pleasure spec- 
tacle. They were guardians of a crop, as sure 
and even more constant than any cereal crop. 
The estimated annual crop of wood procurable 
from the Adirondack forest totals 250,000,000 
board-feet. This is enough to construct an At- 
lantic City board walk from New York to Wash- 
ington each year. And this is but the annual 
pruning from the Park trees from which the living 
forest would benefit. For it is kno^^^l that the 
average decay throughout the year equals the 
year's growth. 

The present rate of consumption is too great. 
We are not only living on our income, but eating 
into our principal as well. This rate amounted to 
544,254,898 board-feet in 1901. This is equivalent 
to 3800 feet to the acre for 103,135 acres. This 
makes the handsome total of 161 square miles de- 
forested a year. Such lumbering is bad enough, 




riioto by Warwick S. Carpeiite 



Pines of Saranac 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 97 

but in addition the acids used in the preparation of 
pulp-wood are poured into the streams. Their 
poison kills the fish and sometimes the vegetation. 
And it is a commonplace of scientific measurement 
that the denudation of the forest lowers large 
streams and dries up small ones for part of every 
year. 

In 1868, Verplanck Colvin, the explorer and 
far-sighted surveyor, made the first suggestion of 
a forest preserve. In 1873, he prophesied that 
**The Hudson Eiver Valley must eventually con- 
tain one long marginal city, extending from the 
Mohawk River to New York. The Adirondack 
Wilderness is the only watershed which will af- 
ford a sufficient supply of pure water for such a 
population as will then exist." 

In 1885, the Forest Preserve was at last organ- 
ized. By 1902 it had secured control of 1,325,851 
acres out of the Park's area of 3,226,144 acres. 
In the same year was incorporated a society, com- 
posed of landowners and others interested in 
maintaining the Adirondacks in their beauty of 
forest and water, in their abundance of game and 
fish ; this society was called * ' The Association for 
the Preservation of the Adirondacks." It found 
much work at hand. 

At that time in our national history, an era of 
great prosperity and of great rapacity was begin- 
ning. Individuals, small and great corpora- 



98 THE ADIRONDACKS 

tions, alike, had set their eyes in envy upon the 
riches remaining upon the Adirondack slopes. 
They desired to feast upon the wealth prom- 
ised by water-power. Their influences working 
through Albany had just about paved the way 
for flooding unlimited areas of State lands. 
Other influences had all but amended the State 
constitution with the view to cutting down State 
forests. The title to much land had already been 
surrendered and much timber had already been 
deliberately stolen with the full knowledge of cer- 
tain officials, when this Association came into being. 
For half a generation its labors have been cease- 
less, and certain results that have been attained 
by it would have been lost, to the great detriment, 
if not wholesale destruction, of Adirondack re- 
sources, if its energy had been anything less than 
unflagging. To state some of its triumphs is to 
show how perilously close the great Park had come 
to utter spoliation. 

This society has obtained an amendment to the 
constitution limiting the area of the forest pre- 
serve that might be flooded to three per cent. 

It has advocated the retention by the State of 
title to State waters, because Verplanck Colvin's 
prophecy is coming true. 

It has opposed the granting of State water- 
powers to private interests without compensation 
to the people. 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 99 

It has opposed any amendment permitting the 
removal of live timber from the Forest Preserve. 

It has taken measures to secure construction 
of fire trails in the Forest Preserve. 

It has successfully employed engineers, lawyers, 
and detectives in order to keep informed of mat- 
ters affecting public interests. 

It has been instrumental in obtaining the recent 
bond issue of $7,500,000 for the purchase of For- 
est Preserve lands. 

It has urged appropriations for replanting de- 
nuded areas. 

It has exposed political graft. In 1905 it ex- 
posed the illegal removal of sixteen million board- 
feet of timber from State lands. 

It has studied *' top-lopping," fire-preventive 
inventions, and it helped to secure the substitution 
of oil-burning locomotives within the Forest Pre- 
serve. 

It has sustained officials in the conscientious dis- 
charge of their duty, and has given legal as well 
as moral support to the State's forest adminis- 
tration. 

It has enforced the law against illegal advertis- 
ing signs on public highways of the Park. 

It has retained expert advice in the study of 
forest taxation. 

It has given publicity to the menace of ruthless 
hard-wood lumbering. 



100 THE ADIRONDACKS 

It is still trying to find a substitute for wood- 
pulp in the manufacture of paper, which would 
relieve the vast forests that are being cut down 
each year to make newspapers. 

By arranging conferences between lumber in- 
terests and conservationists, by lectures and un- 
ceasing propaganda, it has forwarded the ideals 
of Adirondack conservation. 

Thanks to this Association, the great Park is 
still a park, still a refuge for wild game. Its mem- 
bers still subscribe large sums that the law may 
be kept over this woodland which is as large as 
three Delawares. And all their efforts will have 
result. Years from now when the Hudson is lined 
with cities and when three hundred million people 
live where now there are the fifty million, this 
magnificent playground will teach the stanch vir- 
tues that can be learned only in the wilderness. 
And the public-spirited members of the Associa- 
tion for the Preservation of the Adirondacks will 
have realized that they, in like manner with the 
Puritans and the heroes of '63, can be called the 
** Makers of America." 

The days are coming wherein we shall again 
become aware of the forest. In the dim long ago 
the forest was a dark hinterland from which evil 
spirits came to prey and into which, glutted, they 
withdrew. Witches lived in the wood. Even to- 
day the dark aisles of the evening firs are shivery 



THE ADIRONDACK FOREST 101 

at nightfall because of these unchallengeable ter- 
rors of the past. Yesterday when out of the 
Adirondack ravines the cougar cried and the howl 
of the wolf sounded across the snow, the frontier 
children shuddered. Yet they liked to hear the 
legends of the wood. 

But with the passing of yesterday the terrors 
abated. The frontier children grew up, reasoned 
themselves out of the witches, and shot the wolves. 
The forest ceased to be a thing of fear, of venera- 
tion, and became a matter of dollars and board- 
feet, a bank account in the rough. It was wan- 
tonly cut and criminally devoured by fire. This 
storehouse of legend, this temple of the race, was 
in danger of extinction. 

Now all that is safely passed. We have let 
the buffalo go ; we have barely saved the beaver, 
but we will save the forest. We will save it, not 
only for fuel, not only against flood, but because 
it is the most beautiful thing on the earth. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE KAQUETTE RIVEE TKIP 

MUCH study of the map had made us mad. 
The Adirondacks, a little clump of moun- 
tains in the northeast corner of New York State, 
had grown very large. This was because we had 
suddenly decided to see them thoroughly. We 
had already spent a month in their least con- 
spicuous corner, with most of the spectacular and 
all the famous places yet to view. Lynn calcu- 
lated that if we took a morning dip in each of the 
Park's lakes and ponds, we could make the round 
in about three years and seven months. To climb 
all the mountains would finish out the decade. 
Clearly to be thorough was to be preposterous. 
We decided to fish the still water on the Moose 
once more and talk things over. We fished, but 
did n't talk, and when shame of dead fish made us 
move, we were agreed upon the wisdom of a sug- 
gestion of Master Thomas's, to make a permanent 
camp on Raquette Lake, hire a canoe, and see the 
southwest Adirondacks from that base. 

It was a matter of one day and two-and-twenty 
thunder showers to Raquette from the Moose. 

102 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 103 

Blithely did the southwest wind heave one blue 
cloud after another over the patient hills. There 
would be a rattle of thunder, and a flow of water 
would set in from the zenith. In ten minutes the 
gray curtain would be rolled away with consider- 
able creaking, and we would come up for air. But 
nature being so very earnest, we were the more 
stirred to laughter. There is a certain imbecility 
about my nature that will crop out on serious oc- 
casions, and Luggins was very serious. Such phe- 
nomena had never figured in his Western life. A 
rain was one thing, but spasmodic drownings were 
another. 

To come upon Raquette gipsy-wise is to surprise 
the essence of beauty. Not many have the for- 
tune, for the lake is famous, touristed. Thou- 
sands of people in a season are shunted off the 
main line at Clearwater and, after leaving de- 
posits of trunks and picnickers along the Fulton 
Chain, arrive at breakfast-time at the Raquette 
terminus. Then a launch deports them to the ho- 
tels and camps to enjoy the summer. It is the 
same system to which all picturesque localities are 
subjected sooner or later and to which most in 
the end succumb. But Raquette 's beauty has not 
been ruined yet, in fact, it is hardly marred. 

At the wildest end, called North Bay on the 
maps, we settled down to a more ambitious house- 
keeping than any yet attempted. A tiny cove 



104 THE ADIRONDACKS 

made the coziness absent from a larger water- 
side. Niggerhead Mountain rose behind and 
made a black beacon to steer for in the dark. The 
view from our supper table showed long, wooded 
capes, wide lake arms and a rare sky-line. The 
shores of the lake are high and overhung with old 
trees, and the length of shore-line is well on to- 
ward a hundred miles. Much of the land is held 
by the State, and that owned privately is fitly 
administered. Some of the great estates have es- 
tablished havens of luxury, but the reaches of 
water are so great that these log palaces are per- 
fectly in keeping. 

On all sides hills run back from the lake and 
many of them are mountains that stand up 
proudly. There is one eminence, called the Crags, 
that is specially worth the fifteen minutes' climb. 
From it one gets the entrancing contour and col- 
ors of the lake. Yet it is so low that the intimate 
loveliness of things lingers in the memory when 
the delight of views from more exaggerated 
heights is but a blur. 

After a month of trail, a canoe was refreshing, 
and we were soon planning trips of two or three 
nights away from our base, a luxury of choice pre- 
senting. Raquette is the paddlers' paradise. 
You can go up to the head of the Fulton Chain, 
or down to Saranac and around by Tupper and 
the Forkeds, or over to Blue and indulge in only 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 107 

negligible carries. We began with Blue. And 
since two Boy Scouts had the benevolence to be 
camping near us, we loaned them the care of Lug- 
gins with a pittance for amiability's sake. They 
were downright good fellows, as Scouts usually 
are, and said that they didn't mind having a 
horse about the house. Of course Luggins in- 
sisted on very little entertaining. 

To set out in a light canoe under a fair heaven 
and with a good wind on the shoulder is to taste 
translation ; and it was a stirring breeze from the 
north that set us briskly on our way. The waters 
of Raquette are so cut that only under the stiffest 
blows are they unmanageable, yet there are 
stretches, particularly with a west wind, that lead 
the stern paddle to admire himself if he comes 
through with a dry boat. Thanks to Lynn's un- 
weakening vigilance, we kept our fidelity to an 
upright keel, and in a shorter time than we '11 ever 
do it again, slid into the flawless waters of the 
Marion. 

The Marion is one of those astonishing Adiron- 
dack streams that you cannot call a river because 
it seems not to flow and yet which you dare not 
call a flow because there is some current. It winds 
so painstakingly that Lynn said that there must 
be alcohol in the water. Yet in the middle of the 
windingest place we nearly jumped out of the 
canoe on being confronted by an impertinent 



108 THE ADIRONDACKS 

steamer. There it was pumping around the cor- 
ners, as amiable as a dachshund. It conveys the 
public from the Raquette Railway to Blue Moun- 
tain. It is a forgivingly quiet little boat. 

Right in the middle of this amazing trip we 
boarded a toy railroad, canoe and all, and were 
set down by Utowana Lake, which merges into 
Eagle, which merges into Blue. And if you are 
as tired as we were, you will not climb the moun- 
tain on the afternoon you arrive. 

Blue Mountain Lake is most beautiful viewed 
from half-way up its mountain. From there it is 
a gem. Close at hand it is a gem still, but its set- 
ting has been tamed a bit. It does exist slightly 
for the hotel ; it should exist wholly for the moun- 
tain. But I have to admit that that is what Lynn 
calls transcendental raving and a bit unreason- 
able. The lake to-day is gemlike enough. Lovely 
islands venture out from wooded shores. The 
sights of housekeeping upon its capes are cun- 
ningly concealed by an arras of green. And the 
guardian mountain asserts its guardianship with 
dignity. 

The climb added very little to our knowledge of 
the wilderness because one of the white clouds 
that had been piling up suddenly toppled over 
upon the summit and us. And when we crawled 
out of the debris of lightning, thunder, and hail, 
we could see that the rain was raining all around 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 109 

for considerable distances as in the Stevenson 
poem. 

We met a man on tlie way down, also a}>andoninp^ 
the bath, who told us that while extensive, there 
was nothing unique about the view. His opinion 
I have heard repeated by others. Blue stands 
about two thousand feet above its lake, which is 
about as much above the sea. On all sides there 
must be a notable look-off into the ridgy west and 
toward the mountainous north, but the big i>eaks 
are so far away that the view leaves an absentee 
impression, I am told. 

The only unfortunate circumstance about asking 
information is that you get too much. Our in- 
former, whom we had picked up at the three-thou- 
sand-foot level, had a freshness of interest that 
was astonishing in one of his years. lie had the 
appearance and endurance of a German spy, and 
if it had been the year for German spies we should 
have counted ourselves in fortune. But he knew 
too much about the war. In fact, he knew every- 
thing about it. Although the war was just ending 
its second year, it had been conducted with so 
much variety and vivacity that there was a good 
deal to know ; yet he knew it all and told us about 
it. Perhaps our appearance warranted it. There 
is a chance that our clothing, bedraggled with the 
now bankrupted cloud, or our faces (not too in- 
telligent at their best and now unshaven) begged 



110 THE ADIRONDACKS 

to be brought up to date. The stranger made the 
most of the supposition. 

We had got only to the merits of the Gallipoli 
campaign when we reached the lake. It had been 
very historic, but fatiguing and we were in terror 
lest the gentleman should offer to finish the war 
while we paddled him around the lake. The after- 
noon was turning fine. It was a critical moment. 
But there was no breeze to speak of, and the black 
flies, the punkies, the mosquitos, and the assorted 
gnats, seeing us standing about the boat in delicate 
attitudes, joined the party informally. At first 
our instructor would only pause in his exposition 
for a moment to slap. We did nothing to frighten 
them off. Soon the narrative flagged for longer, 
but none the less industrious, intervals. They 
were biting deliciously. He fled. Lynn grinned 
as he looked affectionately at the mosquitos eating 
his bare arm. **We couldn't hurt 'em after 
that," he said. The boat shot out on the lake, 
and we were rid of all the bores without bloodshed. 

There was not much use for Luggins at Ra- 
quette. Therefore he enjoyed the place: it is a 
pleasant thing to make everybody happy. But 
we decided, on the Scouts' advice, to harness him 
once more in a jaunt to the back country, including 
West Mountain, an eminence of not quite three 
thousand feet and one which we would not have 
bothered with except for their remark, '*It 's the 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 111 

bulliest little view in the country, and don't you 
forget Shallow, either.'^ 

Skirting the shores of North Bay to the West 
Mountain trail (which is fairly well marked from 
the west side of the lake nearest the mountain) 
was a recrudescence of frontier life. If we had 
been commandeered for the task, we would have 
reproached our officers as singular fools. But as 
it was a voluntary venture, we complimented our 
pertinacity and plugged on. Only Luggins' com- 
pliments were doubtful. There would be an open 
space of great trees, then a ravine overgrown with 
alders and black flies, then a short scramble 
through moss and a repeat. But we had waited 
for exactly the right day and after we had struck 
the trail, we progressed swimmingly. 

The first twenty minutes of the trail is boggy; 
the second twenty undulates through lifting woods 
of birch and spruce, and the last forty, which is 
the climb, tries not good brawn, but harries some- 
what the over-corpulent. Out West we had led 
our horse up and down natural ladders that Jacob 
would have liked to reconsider. But Luggins was 
always game. No matter how diffident was his 
attitude toward the ordinary occupations of the 
road, when confronted with something serious, the 
blood of his sporting ancestry simmered in his 
veins. The more crushing the predicament, the 
gamer he got. Otherwise we would have been 



m THE ADIRONDACKS 

fools, indeed. I am thus explicit lest somebody 
try to out-Hannibal us with a mere livery-stable 
nag. Nothing but impossible luck would prevent 
such an' animal's address remaining permanently, 
''The Woods." It takes Western experience to 
teach a horse not to break its leg in mossy pit- 
falls. With one to pull and another to prod you 
can get a pony up anything short of a precipice ; 
it is the down-grade grave that yawns. 

All this is not intended to convey that the ascent 
of West was hard. There was scarcely a rod not 
practicable for a nurse and a baby-carriage. 
There was one rod. We had sat down to let Lug- 
gins recapture his wind and we had sat too in- 
discriminately. It was a place set aside in the 
divine plan for some yellow-jackets and for them 
only. They stood upon their rights, and we stood 
not upon the order of our going. I have never 
seen Luggins more agreeable to the suggestion of 
speed. He disappeared into the moose bushes in 
an angry splash of green. Ljmn made an emo- 
tional gesture and dove after him. I followed 
under the strongest convictions. I don't know 
why the Scouts had not told us of that place. 
Such neglect lessened the value of the movement 
in our eyes for a while. Inquiring tourists can 
locate that nest by looking carefully for a deceitful 
trail that branches from the main trail on the 
left as you ascend. The trail has to be noticed for 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 113 

the descent anyway, as it is sure to mislead you 
and you might just as well have the yellow- jackets 
in mind at the same time. They have staked their 
claim just a few yards above the fork. If there 
is any doubt look for a blue bandana that I 
dropped in the briskness of my departure. I am 
sure it is there. 

Although it was high noon and after when we 
reached the bare top, the day had still the fresh- 
ness of creation upon it. A world of green ranges 
fell away from all sides, and on all sides lay the 
blue and glitter of much water. Raquette seemed 
everywhere, and a score of outer lakes ringed us 
round with their effect of calm and waiting. Crisp 
white cloudlets floated at serene heights, and here 
and there threw the panorama into shadow. The 
wind came so gently from the north that it was 
comfortable to have our tea and mush and rai- 
sins on the summit. The outspread peacefulness 
grooved itself into our sensibilities, and I need but 
to close my eyes to recover the scene, so white and 
blue under the caressing sun. A moment of such 
content is worth a mountain of preparation; or 
rather each for the other. And when you add to 
the fair universe yonder a comprehending friend 
at hand, you have the best of life's adventures. 
We proved that we knew how to live in heaven by 
quitting the sunmait in good time. 

The exploration now began. The Scouts had 



114 THE ADIRONDACKS 

mentioned Big Moose Lake, but we knew from 
previous inquiry that Big Moose was the abiding 
place of fortune while Master Thomas had told 
us about the Brandreth trout. Besides, it was 
trailless thither, and we were still ambitious. 

It was slow, but not painful progress that we 
made down into the great green bowl below. 
Wilderness advance is measured variously. 
About the only unit never taken is the mile. On 
corduroy I suspect that travel would be registered 
by the oath. Ordinary snow-shoe climbing can 
count at least a mile an hour. The airman counts 
his flight by States. And we with Luggins, at 
times negotiating ledges and at others traversing 
beech groves, with abandon, felt that a mile an 
hour was not too disastrous a speed. As yet time 
was no particular object and place absolutely 
none; so we neither urged Luggins to the verge 
of eternity nor let him dawdle. We made our 
first camp beneath some pines with a brook to 
guard the fire, and slept where no one had ever 
slept before. 

Trout-fishing with a horse was a new and pos- 
sibly not an unrivaled enjoyment. We tried vari- 
ous combinations: tying him up and going back 
for him, leading him on and fishing up to him, 
dividing the pleasure of being groom by the watch. 
If Brandreth had not really been more than a 
mere earthly trout-stream has a right to be, we 




Photo by Warwick S. Carpenter 



Nameless Creek 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 117 

must have shot Luggins from sheer vexation and 
carried out our kitchen on our backs. But Brand- 
reth would have restored the temper of a dyspep- 
tic. Beautiful pools, beautiful trout, beautiful 
bugs! We began with cursings, but concluded 
with pity, for as the day wore on so did the flies. 
"We covered Luggins 's flanks, but that only drove 
them to his fore. To us protected by science and 
enlivened by great luck, the blacks were of a negli- 
gible interest. But to Luggins, with nothing to 
think about except his station in a mismanaged 
world, they were humiliating. Finally we made 
a glorified smudge on each side of him and set 
off down the stream with easy consciences. Youth 
and love and Italy was, as a combination, utterly 
flat compared to youth and late afternoon on 
Brandreth when the trout were rising. The 
Scouts had done a good turn the day that they 
told us of West Mountain and the regions be- 
yond. 

After consideration of the calendar we gave up 
the notion of doing the Fulton Chain. Perhaps 
the nearness of Brandreth to our camp on North 
Bay had something to do with it, but our imagina- 
tions had more. The Fulton Chain is a navigable 
string of lakes dedicated to the summerer. He 
lines their banks. His victrolas fill in the natural 
vacancies of an evening in the woods. His women- 
folk enjoy themselves shrilly. Not that the sum- 



118 THE ADIRONDACKS 

merer is not a good sign. He is an earnest of 
the day when ''God's green caravanserai" shall 
supplant the more popular summer hotel. There 
is everything to be said for the summer camper, 
no matter how clumsy or how careless of his tin 
cans. May his tribe increase! But also may it 
not overrun the lovelier wilderness until it shall 
have learned to put out its fires and to bury its 
cans. 

For the beginning Adirondacker the Fulton 
Chain sounds like a very training school. Stores 
are not so far apart that you will suffer if you 've 
left the ax at home. Steamers are at hand to 
pick you up if blistered. The carries are supplied 
with carriers if your pride goeth before a haul. 
And the railroad folders say that ''brook trout, 
lake trout, whitefish, and bass inhabit these 
waters." It does not say how closely, however. 
I should judge that sparsely would be a good 
adverb. 

The Fulton section of the Adirondacks centering 
about Old Forge is about the oldest of the sports- 
man's retreats. It was from this region that the 
game getters went out to kill the last elk, the last 
moose, and the last wolf. Even yet the winter 
season in this section is not unreminiscent of the 
good old days, for in winter the voice of the sum- 
mer maiden is gone, the tan of the bank clerk is 
fading in the city movies, and the Old Forger's 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 119 

age-long occupation of sitting by the stove has 
recommenced for another eight months. 

We did, however, paddle down Brown's Tract 
Inlet, which is the last stage of the voyage from 
Old Forge to Raquette, and we can recommend it 
as an auspicious opening to the major pleasures 
of the lake. We also walked into Shallow, which 
calls forth memories of raspberries, deer, and 
frogs. Part of the trail is in a deserted lumber 
road, lined with bushes that shed red lusciousness 
into eager hands. It is a strong-minded person 
who can quit that road in good health. 

Shallow is a pond of hospitable dimensions, yet 
so withdrawn as to gladden a hermit's heart. We 
were lucky enough to discover a leaky, but floatable 
craft which ferried us to an ideal spot for a camp 
on the side farthest from the trail-end. Tall pines 
gave play to the breeze, and birch and balsam 
offered their best. Behind us thick woods built 
up a strictest privacy where dusk skulked forever. 

A creek, called Nameless, saunters into the pond 
at the west end, and on the pavement of lily-pads 
at its mouth we caught supper. Ah! Delicious 
legs. They grew long and meaty at the nether 
extremities of croakers whose self-satisfaction was 
their undoing. No art was needed to procure 
them. You tickled their throats with a bare fish- 
hook and when it was in the right position jerked. 
If it was an unsuccessful jerk, the frog gave you 



120 THE ADIRONDACKS 

another try. I have never seen anything more 
idiotically satisfactory, even if it was not art. 

While we were preparing supper and the odor 
of the frying-pan rose to heaven, the deer began 
to appear on the grassy beaches half a mile away. 
The sun, which had set for us, still shone for them. 
They roamed placidly and fed at ease. Deer have 
not good sight, as we proved by getting into our 
absurd shallop and poling toward them. Half- 
way over one raised its head and went on feeding. 
Soon the three began to move restlessly along the 
margin. But we had got within sixty yards be- 
fore they jumped the bushes and were gone. In 
a decent canoe we could have halved that distance 
and perhaps better. Master Thomas has told me 
that in one hot August afternoon he has counted 
twenty-seven deer on the shores of Shallow. 
Large preserves lie near the pond, and the deer 
are far more numerous than in the east. 

Nameless Creek is an artist's lure. At twilight 
it winds in blackness of shadow between skeletons 
of drowned trees. The darkness and silence of 
the forest were heavy. One is almost glad to 
get back to a fire from so eerie and lonesome a 
lagoon. But in the sunlight it is enchanting. 
Spruce files stand in along the sides. There is 
often the stir of some kingfisher, and the rounded 
clouds float flawless beneath you. There are two 
skies. 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 121 

Such a place demands comradeship. It is an 
easy pleasure to spend the day fishing down a 
mountain brook alone. But Nameless is too aloof, 
the gaunt and naked trees too taciturn. Lynn 
felt the same as I about it. We both confessed 
to a relief in coming out upon the pond. To call 
the place "Nameless" was an inspiration. 

And while I am on the question of influences, 
I would like to add my testimony concerning that 
enigmatic sensation, the fear of the dark. Why, 
do you suppose, that two grown men, who have 
deliberately fled the great white ways because of 
the enjoyment of the great unlighted, — why should 
they prefer to stick around the camp-fire after 
dark! Once I slept alone in the woods for two 
months and at the end of that time I was no more 
broken from the faint distrust of something be- 
yond the firelight than at the beginning. It was 
the safest place in the world, my Adirondack camp. 
There were no dangerous animals, no dangerous 
insects, no snakes, no tramps. I took supper reg- 
ularly with friends on the other side of a lake, 
paddled over alone under glorious heavens, and 
suffered no feeling of the nerves. But my tent 
was fifty feet back from the water's edge, and 
those fifty feet through darkness up the familiar 
path verged on the unpleasant. If they had been 
more unpleasant I should have left a lantern at the 
landing to light me home, but that seemed childish. 



m THE ADIRONDACKS 

There was always a relief when I had lighted the 
lantern in my tent — a very slight relief, but actual. 
I never thought about being alone after the light 
was burning or minded waking up at night. I 
would like to know whether forest rangers, Yel- 
lowstone guards, night watchmen and all the citi- 
zens whose legal business is conducted after dark, 
have this same faint distrust of it that is many 
degrees less than fright, yet a shade different from 
daylight ease. All our cave-men ancestors could 
not have been arrant cowards, lying in mortal ter- 
ror at the approach of twilight. Yet anything 
short of that could scarcely have survived as in- 
stinct when so many other instincts have fallen 
by the way. On the other hand, if it be imagina- 
tion, it should be controllable and not involuntary. 
Children are brave by nature, yet they suffer most. 
There are more things in heaven and earth and 
in the dark, than are dreamt of in our philosophies, 
Horatio. 

There was one trip about which we had often 
talked, the famous Raquette River loop, which our 
Scouts, by taking charge of Luggins, made possible 
for us. As High Lords of the Stable they had 
won the confidence of Lynn on the occasion of 
our excursion to Blue. Unfortunately they were 
going to break camp on the fifth morning, which 
gave us just four days for the hundred-mile cir- 
cuit. But it was too good a chance to lose, and 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 123 

we made our getaway at six-thirty under the best 
auspices of wind and sky. Ten days of canoeing 
had made us fit. 

In the northeastern part of our country there 
are many celebrated sequences of lake and stream 
which sportsmen have extolled; some because the 
scenery is a little wilder, some because the fish 
are a little bigger. In Canada there are more 
lakes than there are outdoor men to use them. 
But I can think of none where you can make a 
circle with so little portaging through country 
constantly varying, but always beautiful. To the 
woods-lover it is enough to be in the forest. One 
does not need to laud one section more than an- 
other. There is no city on our continent that 
cannot offer at the end of a trolley some of the 
charms of nature. And so it shall not be my care, 
advertisement-wise, to magnify our days upon the 
Raquette. The Rangeleys may be more exciting 
and Algonquin Park more wild. I hope some day 
to visit both. But on the Raquette the nights are 
just as mysterious, the spruce-lands just as allur- 
ing, the spell of the twilight just as subtle, the 
wandering odors just as sweet as in more distant 
wildernesses. Go see for yourself. 

The broad bay, leading out of Raquette on the 
northeast, draws the south wind beautifully on a 
summer morning. Gaily we blew before it. We 
did not know in great detail what lay before us, 



124 THE ADIRONDACKS 

but we did know that the distance approximated a 
hundred miles, and that we had about a hundred 
hours to spend. It may not be the ideal way to 
set out upon an excursion, but there was a certain 
novelty and stimulus in being limited. We puri- 
tan progenies do thrive upon goals and disciplines. 

The rounded hills slipped steadily by, and we 
removed our ascetic stores for the carry to Forked 
Lake with the feeling that we had hardly got under 
way, although Luggins was already five miles to 
the rear. Half a mile of road and we were re- 
embarked. 

Forked is an ingratiating lake. From its shores 
rise great rocks, and behind them stand worthy 
trees, and all the while long arms beckon to be 
explored. But we promised ourselves another 
visit and paddled on. 

The Raquette River reassumes its identity after 
issuing from Forked Lake ; it even stands upon its 
dignity as a river and demands some obeisance in 
the form of carries. There is a long mile and a 
half carry around impossible water which a wagon 
will perform for you for a dollar and a half. With 
a horse waiting to be asked, to carry your own 
boat seems like too gratuitous sweating. At the 
farther end your lunch will nestle gratefully in its 
appointed place. But we held out for another half 
mile, preferring to eat ours near the sound of 
Buttermilk Falls. 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 127 

Buttermilk is quite a decent cascade. In one of 
Adirondack Murray's tales, a guide (either som- 
nambulant or full of whiskey) is supposed to go 
over it in a boat and survive. Murray claimed 
that the exploit was founded on fact. It is diffi- 
cult to believe, and as Lynn remarked, "Butter- 
milk and whiskey must be a mighty fetchin' con- 
coction, but he 'd rather take his straight." The 
late thunder storms had loaned volume to the falls. 
They churned up a curtain of mist and roared 
handsomely. We gave our digestion its due be- 
side this tumult. But though the spectacle, the 
overflow of fifty ponds, begged continually for one 
look more, Long Lake lay a little way ahead, with 
but a half-mile carry intervening. 

Of Long Lake I am ashamed to say that I re- 
member almost nothing. There remains a blurred 
picture of a ribbon of water, a bridge appearing 
remotely ahead, enlarging, drawing close enough 
till its spidery rods shone in the sun, then passing 
into the unconsidered rearward. I remember the 
picture of low hills, points that loomed ahead, 
jutted at us, and fell by. Chiefly, however, re- 
mains the exhilaration of the paddle. It was a 
warm day, and the southwest wind held steady. 
A glance at the map will show you what that meant 
to us. It meant almost aviation in a light canoe. 
The little waves curled in exasperation, but could 
not keep up. Speed was no effort. Long Lake 



128 THE ADIRONDACKS 

is fourteen miles in length on paper. With the 
wind it is four, against it forty. To have bucked 
that breeze a whole afternoon would have made 
fit penance for the damned. To fly with it was 
exhilaration. Air-travel, I foresee, will leave few 
memoirs. 

Long Lake is too desirable to be dismissed with 
a hazy word. It is the geographical axis of the 
Park. To the south and the west and the north 
lies an intricacy of waterway that a generation of 
vacations could scarcely master. To the northeast 
rise the Giants Clothed with Stone, five hundred 
square miles of them. Park lands and private 
preserves guarantee the length and breadth of all 
this beauty. I am beginning to regret that south- 
west wind. 

With the excitement over, we began to feel 
fatigue, and soon after entering the Eaquette, 
found a camping place. The summer was getting 
on, and twilight coming earlier now, and before 
we had the night wood gathered, bright sheaves 
of the aurora wavered up into the northern skies. 
The banners of light advanced beyond the zenith. 
Shadows of white flame quivered and disappeared ; 
cold, aloof, spiritual, and intense. And when the 
aerial signaling was done, and the streamers had 
ceased their flying, the white glow along the north 
still lighted the forest eerily. It was like the re- 
flection from some great celebration of which we 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 129 

had not heard. It was something to have seen 
from the outside. Some day we would know. 
Down we laid us, with all our muscles murmuring 
content, and almost before we had taken the last 
turn, the sun of morning was shining under the 
tent's gray hood. 

Having made such unpredicted progress on the 
day before, we were now in a position to take the 
longer route, which included Upper Saranac. If 
we had been pressed for time, the alternative 
would have been to follow the Raquette around 
to the Tuppers. 

The day began smoothly with five winding miles 
down the easy stream. Then came a long carry 
(also a dollar and a half) around white water and 
some falls, with a farewell to the river at Axton. 
A lift over into a small pair of lakes, the Spec- 
tacles, a half mile of carry and we ate belated 
lunch at the bottom end of Upper Saranac. 

Saranac is a very beautiful sheet of water, 
pierced by a hundred wooded promontories, fur- 
nishing a hundred charming vistas. But for men 
hunting rest, it is hardly satisfying. At the end 
of every vista there is a **no trespassing" sign, 
actual or implied. Every promontory gives a rea- 
son for moving on. Saranac is no longer a part 
of the wilderness; it is a pleasure-land of great 
beauty. If you recognize this at the outset, there 
will be no disappointment. There is plenty of 



130 THE ADIRONDACKS 

wilderness elsewhere, and one must not begrudge, 
but congratulate the millionaires upon their archi- 
tects. Nature has been educated to perfect taste. 
The lake is eight miles long, and unless you try- 
to find a place for your tent, you would never 
guess how expensive. 

At the head of Saranac stands the Inn, from the 
porch of which an exquisitely modulated view of 
hill and headland and level waters is to be had. 
On the porch the remote world of lovely dresses 
and afternoon tea was going round. We had for- 
gotten that there was any reality but ours. It was 
something of a shock. We hurried around to the 
kitchen door for some supplies. 

Of one thing I am sure : the joys of the road are 
very real, and so are the joys of the Ritz, but you 
cannot oscillate from one to the other too rapidly 
and enjoy it. For weeks on end a fellow may elect 
to do his own cooking, to dress in woolens, to 
wander light-heartedly through dust and misad- 
venture, with the whole system of luxury and 
equipage forgotten and undesired. He may also 
breakfast at ten, golf in white flannels, dine to 
music and the converse of fair ladies, and never 
feel an itch to wash the dishes or sleep out in the 
rain. It is habit that hardens you to either. But 
this is the point : you have to take these moods in 
big splashes and not too thinly sandwiched. You 
dare not alternate luxury and the Spartan life too 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 181 

rapidly, or you will be calling yourself regretful 
names. 

Now Lynn and I were far from ready for the 
big exchange, so we bought our chops and choco- 
late in high disdain of white napery and hors- 
d'oeuvres. We left the ladies on their porch as un- 
envious as cold potatoes. While doubtless they, 
using our sad case to make a moment's conversa- 
tion, wondered what pleasure we could find in 
spoiling food and sleeping on the ground. It is 
the old question of age and the red gods. 

It was not easy to find a place to camp where 
we could trespass in comfort and safety at the 
same time. But we finally Robin-Hooded our- 
selves under the greenwood half-way down the 
lake. I trust that our absentee landlord heard 
the prayers we raised to his forbearance. But 
there are intruders and intruders, and the latter 
have to suffer for the former. In this connection 
I have a story that is absurd, but true. On the 
grounds of the Placid Club stands a grove of 
white birches, whose beauty was radiant. Some 
strangers of the summer race passed by and cov- 
eted and cut, utterly regardless of private prop- 
erty or the injury to the trees. They wanted the 
bark ; the girdled trees might die. When the crime 
was discovered, the club painted the eyesore white 
in an effort to save the trees as well as to preserve 
their looks. It was too cleverly done. NQt a 



132 THE ADIRONDACKS 

month had passed before another party of un- 
invited picnickers was seen actually endeavoring 
to remove the counterfeit. There is a rapacity 
that o'erleaps itself: these picnickers were fined. 
It would make an interesting study of national 
growth, the statistics of vacations. The cramped 
city-dweller is the man who needs nature most 
and the last to take to the woods. He commits 
the most grotesque trespasses. He does not un- 
derstand their spirit. 

Offense comes from every creed and con- 
dition of man. And the amount of selfishness per- 
petrated by the passer-by is enraging. The holi- 
day season is marked by a litter of past lunches. 
Smoldering cigarettes and unextinguished matches 
ruin men's estates with a sickening finality. It 
is small wonder when one's holdings are kept un- 
harmed only at the expense of perpetual vigilance 
that landowners should limit their courtesies. 
They are really remarkably generous. A camper 
with a reputation for carefulness with fire can 
obtain almost any privilege. Perhaps another 
generation of training will eliminate the vacation 
hog. 

But let the transitory grouch disappear in the 
odor of broiled chop. For some time we had sub- 
sisted on epicurean dishes, trout in all its mani- 
festations. Lynn had embellished our meatless 
days until there was no virtue in them. However, 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 133 

when we did find ourselves sitting before the little 
sizzlers and when we did sink our incisors into 
the crusted fat, two vegetarian votes were lost. 
The relish of some meals lives after thenL I 
have not as yet established a full sympathy with 
our ancestors of the cavern who ate their meat on 
the hoof, despite its scientific advantages. But 
that evening's satisfaction will not be soon for- 
gotten. We did not bother with forks. We had 
neglected to hunt for them till the chops were 
getting cold. It taught us a lesson of the good 
old pre-utensil days: that a chop in the hand is 
worth two on the plate. You have heard of gnaw- 
ing hunger. Well, we gnawed, and if that be 
brutish, then I am in perfect accord with the dumb 
animals. 

The third day, of varied memory, dawned fair. 
But the gods, thus far so heavily in our favor, 
were turning neutral. A south wind made the 
four miles down to the Sweeney carry an exhibi- 
tion of early morning vigor, and when we arrived, 
Sweeney or his descendant was not to be discov- 
ered. The carry was three miles, however, and 
transportation was worth a good deal of waiting. 
Yet when the transportation company did come, 
he said that he was engaged by another party. 

Money is the resource of those who lack the 
more spiritual persuasions, I suppose. So, as a 
confession of weakness, we offered him money. 



134. THE ADIRONDACKS 

It was rather dreadful, but we argued that in all 
probability this other party was not being pa- 
tiently awaited by a packhorse and two amateur 
horse-keepers, and that therefore his errand could 
not be as urgent as ours. The carrier thought 
the same for two dollars extra. 

It was late in the morning when we were fairly 
on our way, and there were still fifty complicated 
miles ahead of us. The south wind increased man- 
fully, and the heat beat upon us, but every stroke 
was bringing us nearer home, and we said little. 
At times the country opened to rolling vistas domi- 
nated by Mount Morris. At times the forest 
closed about us. We met nobody and had no ad- 
venture of note, and our first stop was before the 
swift water eight miles or so below the carry, 
where we quieted our feelings with a slim tea and 
a promise of a generous supper. 

Below, about fifteen minutes, if you will look 
for another channel on the map, you will find a 
decided short cut, and almost immediately you 
come out on Big Simon's Pond. We didn't stop 
to inquire who Big Simon was, but set to work 
using his pond without permission and with all 
the energy at our command. Very soon we came 
around the bend and were confronted by our worst 
fears. It was to be a lively afternoon. 

Looking back upon it, I believe that the big 
wind was a help. Every moment was a sparkling 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 137 

uncertainty, and the fun of it relieved the toil. 
The canoe was light; Lynn was skill itself; the 
waves were playful rather tlian dangerous as long 
as we observed ordinary caution. But just before 
we landed, after it was all over but the shouting, 
I suddenly realized that it had been a day's work. 
The sun was almost of the same opinion. But 
not so the map. There was a giant carry ahead 
of us, three miles of it at least, and this time no 
charioteer was waiting to be conjured forth even 
by all the money in the township. For now wo 
had been insensibly drawn back into the wilds. 
The influence of the village at the upper end of 
Big Tupper did not reach so far. We had no 
other's strength to rely on. 

How people accomplish things alone I do not 
see. It was because Lynn was there (to whom I 
could not explain that I was weary to the marrow 
and that life was disagreeably pointless anyway) 
that I began to tie the paddles for the portage. 
Or rather it was because Lynn was Lynn. I know 
many a good soul before whom I would have no 
particular hesitancy in lying down and dying. 
They are good to dine with and to sit with through 
the play. But I cannot conceive of them leading 
me into action. And what is comradeship for if 
it is not the thing that makes the extra mile pos- 
sible? 

As usual we did our hard work in silence, and 



188 THE ADIRONDACKS 

as usual it proved less wearing than our fears. 
To be sure the light did almost fail us. To be 
sure I got so tired that I could make progress with 
the boat only by dint of counting sixties, planning 
things to eat, and other mental makeshifts. Three 
miles isn't much if you spell each other off by 
the watch, but it is a great thing to have behind 
you. And when it was over, we suddenly remem- 
bered our noon-time promise of a big meal. 

We remembered it, but neither of us mentioned 
it. 

''1 think I 'd like a little tea," L^^m murmured 
from the patch of sand where he lay blinking at the 
first star. 

''With the fresh loaf and apple sauce," I added 
from the flat of my back. My foot, I think, was 
half way in the lake where it had fallen. 

We had carried the dried apples by every meal, 
saying that we 'd find a better use for them yet. 
It is a filling, tasty, good-to-go-to-bod-on dish, is 
apple sauce, delicately sweetened and eaten with 
new bread. Up we got to put the kettle on. And 
then the tragedy happened. The plates were got, 
our palates primed, our bodies propped for the 
final labor of eating, and we found that one of 
us (no matter which) had sweetened our piece de 
resistance with corn meal. The result was mostly 
de rcsistaucc. 

That evening we broke every law of our own 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 139 

decalogue. Instead of making bed, we scooped 
out hollows in the sand. Instead of making a 
night fire, we relied upon the season's not betray- 
ing us. Instead of putting up the tent, we put it 
under. And, I might as well add, instead of 
sleeping, we dozed off from time to time. 

Yet from that same sand bank I carry to this 
day three pictures that my memory loves to look 
on. One was of late evening. A quarter moon 
was just disappearing behind the black wall of 
spruces, and the shores of the little lake seemed 
very still. The next must have been after mid- 
night. It was much colder and wreaths of mist 
were curling from the pond; a loon was calling 
from the farther shore. Lynn was sleeping, his 
arm thrown back over his fine head. I lay down 
again, the forsaken call, the vapors of the lake, 
and the breath of Lethe winding round my heart. 

The last picture was too beautiful for fully 
waking eyes. The sun had not risen, but had 
sent scarlet and orange streamers to proclaim his 
coming. The pond lay breathless in the coils of 
mist. Except for the lad beside me, there was no 
hint of life. It was creation over again. And 
then he stirred, opened his eyes, saw me awake, 
and said, yawning: 

''We 're damned fond of Luggins, don't you 
think?" 

The day had come on which we had pledged 



140 THE ADIRONDACKS 

ourselves to lighten our Scouts of their responsi- 
bility, and we were five carries and six lakes from 
home. But the spite had left the south wind, and 
we attacked the carries with precision. While 
Lynn tied the paddles crisscross for a shoulder 
rest, I assembled the other articles. If it was his 
turn with the canoe, I helped him up with it, got 
under the big duffel bag, slung the other over it, 
carried the ax in one hand, the rods in the other, 
and led the way. It took two minutes to get 
started and two to reassemble the things in the 
boat, count them, and push on. ''Business as 
usual" was our slogan, and the little carries be- 
came not pestiferous, but amusing. As for the 
aches of yesterday, they had vanished with the 
morning mists. It had become a pleasure jaunt 
again. There is something so reviving in being 
immersed in the air of forests that the amount of 
actual slumber does n't matter much. 

We were now traveling through the great Whit- 
ney Preserve. Deer herded on the shores of the 
little ponds. They did not always bother to run 
away. Loons swam a little to one side and went 
on fishing. We were so tuned down to the natural 
key that we vibrated with pleasure to the com- 
monest things. Could the woods have performed 
a greater service! By shedding starch and five- 
course meals and the chauffeur, one finds the lux- 
ury of flannel shirts and the taste of food and 



THE RAQUETTE RIVER TRIP 141 

the mastery of the wheel. Think, then, what dis- 
coveries lie in wait for the man who can keep the 
best of each variety of life. It is the middle course 
that makes the slipperiest riding. Extremes are 
easy. It is easy to succumb to the lazy life of 
the log cabin or to the schedules of citizen routine. 
In one sphere you do not think at all ; in the other 
your thinking is done for you ; the result of either 
is listlessness. But to carry your mental stimu- 
lants to the woods or to bring your woods health 
and simplicities to town is to improve upon con- 
tent. It is to create a new world for most of us. 
The flaring morn had been portentous of chang- 
ing weather, and as we entered Forked Lake at 
its northernmost projection, the sun yielded to the 
steadily thickening cloud. The dark high shores 
of that enchanted water were close about us; no 
wind stirred; the afternoon darkened. The fore- 
boding spruces were prophetic of coming storm. 
The season was summer, but the sparkle was gone. 
Everything conveyed some subtle suggestion of 
the severer season so lately past, so soon to come 
again. In the north country summer is but an 
armistice. Spirits run high, but there always re- 
mains the shadow of struggle, but scantily veiled. 
The pines have been too long wracked by winter 
winds to lose their sternness in a short six weeks 
or the spruces their hint of snow. Spring's pen- 
nants proclaim that the truce is on ; but an August 



14« THE ADraONDACKS 

frost is like to slay in treachery. It is a long 
defense that trees and animal and man have to 
make against the cold. But it breeds greatness. 

The last carry, the last rearrangement in the 
canoe, and then the last five miles. Darkness had 
shut in, but the rain yet forbore. We remem- 
bered the exultation in our flight do^vn that same 
channel only four days before. It might have 
been four weeks. Another mood had taken its 
place. We were pretty tired, but we were finish- 
ing strong; we were coming home. We had seen 
much and lived a good deal, and a cozy camp was 
awaiting us. Exultation might have passed, but 
satisfaction had come. There is something very 
bed-rock about satisfaction. 

Around the cape decorated by the Carnegie 
establishment, and our strokes strengthened. We 
saw a fire. It was the Scouts'. They, then, were 
still hopeful. We paddled. They had been more 
than hopeful, faithful. They had a supper all pre- 
pared. It was downright religious of them. 
And it warmed our hearts that Luggins was so 
pleased to see us. Truly this was a home-coming. 
That night we slept the sleep of perfect harmony 
with life. 



CHAPTER VII 

UNCONSIDERED CBANBEREY 

THE next day, with a northeast storm beat- 
ing steadily down the lake, we lay in a glory 
of indolence within our castle. The rain had be- 
gun late in the night. I had heard the first slow 
and measured drops, half aroused, and had turned 
over in that most perfect luxury of warmth and 
weariness, drowsing away into the limbo of no 
more duties to do. 

Every so often in camp you loaf and mend 
your outfit; every so often a rest is enforced by 
the weather. When these two conditions are coin- 
cident, delicious is the savor thereof. 

It was a magnificent storm. A long roar per- 
vaded the forest. But as our own position was 
sheltered we banished a fatuous sympathy for 
Luggins and set about enjoying it. Enjoying a 
nor'easter implies a lot of firewood, but we had 
that and could concentrate on maintaining a su- 
perior fire. At odd times we studied the map. 
The rain laid by in time to let us indulge in a 
supper of proportions, and in the afterglow of 

143 



144. THE ADIRONDACKS 

exaggerated kindliness, I broached a scheme that 
I had always longed to try. 

The scheme was simple. It proposed to set our 
faces in a certain direction through the wilderness 
and, with no advice except that of the compass, 
to follow along until we had won our objective. 
In other words, I suggested that we play Daniel 
Boone. 

I was able to go at once into particulars as to the 
direction. I asked Lynn the name of the biggest 
lake in the Adirondacks. He didn't know. I 
asked him in what section more bears were shot 
than in all others together. He couldn't guess. 
I asked him if he 'd ever heard of Cranberry. He 
hadn't. 

Lynn was not the first person that I 'd stumped. 
In fact, for weeks before deciding where to strike 
into the Adirondacks, I had asked people about 
the Cranberry Lake section. I had never found 
one eye-witness. There were scores who had 
never heard of its existence. There were dozens 
who knew Keene Valley or the Saranacs or the 
Schroon Lake country, but had only heard vaguely 
of this western body of water. Several asked me 
to drop them a line about it when I should have 
visited it. Doubtless if I had made my inquiries 
in Buffalo or Utica or Carthage, I should have 
found some one whose grandson or second cousin 
had been near the spot. 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 147 

Here, I thought, in considerable elation, is new 
ground. But before that evening I said nothing 
about it to Lynn. I had saved this most delectable 
news until the most inciting strategic moment. 
The effect was proper. The boy was infected with 
the subtle poison of exploration. We proposed 
to give the western Adirondacks to the world. 
''Cranberry or combust" became our cry. 

Though the railroads would not have you think 
so, there is really no geography to enjoyment. 
The amount of gratification one gets varies not 
with the length of the green ticket, but with the 
strength of your imagination. I have always 
fixed the region vaguely adjacent to Hudson's 
Bay as the land where the nearest superior brand 
of adventure is to be had. But I doubtless could 
be just as uncomfortable nearer home. Miling 
away the time is a habit. It was begun by Marco 
Polo and encouraged by advertisement agencies. 
These agencies beg of you to see all of America 
first. They feature Niagara and Nitnit, Oregon, 
because it is so expensive to get there. They 
neglect Cranberry for the reverse reason and so 
does everybody else. I imagine that a thousand 
Americans have been to Sitka or up the Nile for 
every one who has toured the Adirondack plateau. 
This is a tribute, not to Sitka, but to the agencies. 

The Adirondack plateau comprises the western 
third of the Park. Its level is between fifteen 



148 THE ADIRONDACKS 

hundred and two thousand feet above sea. It is 
filled with little ponds and little mountains and 
little else. You can travel across great areas of 
second growth forest or better without seeing a 
farm. It furnishes a breeding ground for game, 
second only to the well-watched estates for deer, 
and second to no other place for bear and the 
small fur animals. The fishing varies, but chiefly 
among the superlatives. The scenery does not. 
It never takes your breath unless you 're easily 
winded. It was into country such as this, recom- 
mended by none, yet so near to all, that our curi- 
osity was to lead us. 

The northeast storm blew itself out during the 
night, but left a drizzle to blot out an unambitious 
landscape, which it did effectively for two more 
days. We used these, however, in perfecting our 
readiness and storing energy for the attack. Even 
Luggins, I risk believing, was ready for a change, 
even though it involved motion. 

Consequently we were all joyful the next morn- 
ing when the sun shone upon an amphibious world. 
By a supernal show of self-control we gave but 
half an hour to Brandreth trout and had our 
lunch well along the shore of North Pond. ** To- 
morrow," we said, **we will be in uncharted 
waters." Cranberry lay northwest by north, and 
with a sense of exhilaration, we left the road and 
plunged toward it. 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 149 

It was pleasant walking in the wood. The trees 
were tall, the undergrowth inconsequential, and 
Lynn, who was a master-packer, had tied Luggins 
most engagingly to his load. There is nothing 
quite so hard to do as stacking bread, bedding, 
and the rest of a camper's miscellany upon a horse, 
and binding it there to stay. There is no art so 
discouraging to the amateur. It is awkward 
learning to swim, and to master the violin is a 
saddening business. But to arrange things on a 
horse's back tests one's nature. Arrange, heave, 
tie as you will, unless you have the skill of the 
chosen, the items of your load will fall passion- 
ately to earth. There is no beginner's luck in 
packing. The most you can hope for is that your 
beast does not run off when the furniture slips 
beneath his belly. Lynn, however, had learned 
his lesson in Wyoming, and we made progress 
through the open forest without mishap. 

Our camp was pitched beside Lake Lila, in 
Nehasane Park, Dr. Webb's purchase, now belong- 
ing, I believe, to an association which can be justly 
proud of its hundred thousand acres. At even- 
song we heard the rumble of the Montreal express. 
*' To-morrow," we said, ''we shall hear no train." 

At ten of a beautiful morning we crossed the 
rails. The shining pathway curved, graceful and 
significant. As Luggins climbed the embankment, 
stepped gingerly across the steel, and paused, the 



160 THE ADIRONDACKS 

contrast had almost the vividness of poetry. Our 
little caravan, recently so important and again to 
be so important to us, was all at once reduced to 
its proper proportions by contact with modern 
power. Our pleasures seemed small, our efforts 
infantile. To creep off into the woods, to set our 
hearts upon trout an inch longer than their fel- 
lows, to play house with a bit of waterproofing — 
these things in the stern sight of those rails seemed 
to discount ambition and render us open to just 
blame. 

For one depressing moment the rails seemed to 
have the final word. Then from a little way within 
the wood came the song of the whitethroat, just 
once, but a solace to my feeling. It came not so 
robust now as in the springtime, but still rounded 
and crystal clear. ''Ah! wonderful, wonderful, 
wonderful," was all, in descending revery, but 
singing in one's brain through the after-silence, 
was not pathos, but the earnestness of beauty in 
simplest song. It was a sufficient answer to the 
rails. We pushed on. 

I would not like to rise in camp-meeting when 
it is time for the superstitious to go forward. 
But one does notice that three is the popular 
number for mishaps. Our sequence of misfortune 
began almost immediately after lunch. An ani- 
mated southwest breeze was blowing. I was wash- 
ing the dishes by a pond; Lynn was attending to 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 151 

Luggins 's lunch. A little pack-basket was bowled 
over and rolled into the fire. It was rescued be- 
fore it had been much damaged, but our precious 
map was cindered. We were now in condition to 
play Daniel Boone in earnest. The railroad lay 
but an hour behind us, but we were unwilling to 
accept its haughty terms of security. "We declined 
a separate peace with the wilderness. 

One thing that we had over Daniel was a desti- 
nation; even a direction. We were sure to hit 
Cranberry on one of its hundred and sixty-five 
miles of coast-line if we but kept long enough on 
our northwesterly course. The thing was not 
to hit anything else. 

Our apparent indifference to calamity was 
shaken somewhat by our arrival near twilight upon 
the shores of a disconcerting bayou. It was 
elongated beyond sight, yet narrow enough to put 
the shot over. We rested, like Caesar, to get a 
frog's-eye view (Lynn's description) of the 
swampy crossing. Trees did not grow quite close 
enough to fell a bridge-way. **And so," said 
Lynn, ''school-boys will never have to read your 
classic account of that, at least." Luggins could 
swim, but we did not want to drown the duffle. 
To go around appeared an interminable task as 
the lay of land promised swamp. We prepared 
to camp, since dusk was at hand, although the 
situation was not perfection. 



152 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Then came the third disaster. We discovered 
that we had left our mosquito bar at Raquette, 
and that this was going to be a night foreordained 
for mosquito bar. The rank grass was a sort of 
sanatorium for the lyric insect, and this was its 
Saturday night. Luggins was already showing 
signs of nervousness. Slightly out of temper on 
account of our enforced encampment by a mere 
morass, we grew silent. I grew specially silent, 
because it was I who, in a spasm of preparation 
for the trip, had insisted upon washing out the 
mosquito bar and had left it soaking in a natural 
wash-basin. But the mosquitos made up for any 
silence on our part. 

The mosquitos in the Adirondacks are not so 
numerous as on the northern plains, nor so robust 
as in the swamps of uncleared Jersey. But at 
times they can be enraging beyond the invention 
of words. In another chapter I must have my 
say, for it is a thing no writer of outdoors can 
resist. But being anxious to get to Cranberry, 
I shall here rest content with remarking that for 
choral harmonies and unity of purpose that was 
a red-letter night. It would have been difficult 
to have found a gathering busier or more dis- 
tinguished. By building a vigorous smudge and 
mummifying ourselves in blankets, we escaped 
being torn limb from limb, but the uproar outside 
such a thin partition as a layer of wool was 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 153 

scarcely muffled. And when, at the coming of 
dawn, the pack began to realize that they had 
toiled all night and had taken nothing, their song 
rose into a cheerless and harrowing minor. It 
would have been less disturbing to have been 
quietly eaten. But fatigue had its way, and I was 
drowsing off when Lynn poked me in the ribs and 
asked me whether I thought that St. Paul had 
ever camped out or how had he got grounds for 
his pessimistic cry, ''0 death, where is thy sting!" 

After our night of inaction any action took on 
an aspect of pleasantness. The traverse of the 
flow became an interesting problem. First we 
swam Luggins over, then bound together some 
logs with rope, and swam this raft over with the 
duffle on top, and as in the arithmetic problems, 
succeeded in transferring all the household gods 
in the smallest number of trips and the maximum 
of dryness. With a fervent but simple adieu we 
left this spot of unhallowed memory. 

The day was without excitement, as was fitting. 
We followed a deer trail along the bank of a stream 
which had the goodness to favor our direction. 
It brought us to a fair and square body of water, 
covered with water-lilies and frogs. Our compass 
advised a turn to the right, but an emphatic little 
eminence forbade. We skirted this to the left- 
ward and, coming upon a breezy natural clearing, 
decided to stop there for the night, far from the 



154 THE ADIRONDACKS 

madding cloud. After putting our house in order, 
we decided that the little mountain would give us 
the lay of the morrow's land and climbed it. Un- 
fortunately Adirondack hills do not rise to sym- 
metrical and shiny apexes from which the land- 
scape extends with geographical clearness on all 
sides. There is too much room at the top and it 
is mostly unherpicidal (Lynn's term). But we 
found a convenient tree from which we swayed 
and looked about us with that wild surmise that 
distinguished Balboa's travels. There was very 
little accurate information in the view. Arms of 
water appeared in various places to the westward. 
But the striking sight was the sea-like rolling of 
the landscape. Take the Bay of Biscay in a storm, 
magnify thirty diameters, and you reproduce this 
unfeatured wilderness in contour. Upholster it 
with trees and sprinkle with ponds and you com- 
plete the picture we had from our spruce-top. 
When we finally brought ourselves to the point of 
leaving, in the east the haze of twilight was begin- 
ning to rise, although Lynn insisted it was only a 
bank of mosquitos hovering over our last night's 
marsh. If being alone in the woods was our ob- 
ject, we had at last achieved it. The sky itself 
could not have been more vacant of habitation. 
We had reached a land where height and grandeur 
and the other qualities that are supposed to recom- 
mend mountains were lacking. But there was a 




NFANT Hudson 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 157 

charm about these little green cobs that coaxed 
one 's interest and satisfied. Despise not the small 
topographies; it takes more than magnitude to 
make a mountain. 

The weather had now settled down into a rut of 
pleasantness. We could go to sleep assured and 
awake unbetrayed. The morning brought us to a 
pond, the outlet of which, flowing to the northwest, 
we judged would bring us to Cranberry. On our 
right a long string of hills rose five or six hundred 
feet, and to the southwest there was another con- 
siderable rise. Early in the afternoon a broad 
sparkle ahead confirmed our suppositions. In ten 
minutes we had had our first swim in Cranberry. 

Cranberry Lake, St. Lawrence County, is a fa- 
vored sheet of water. Thanks to a dam, it has 
ranking place for size and length of shore-line. 
It is surrounded by forest. Hills rise from five to 
fifteen hundred feet above the lake level, itself 
fifteen hundred above the sea. Since the brooks 
are stocked with trout, and the woods are full of 
game, it is surprising that an enterprising lot of 
people should pass it by. There are two explana- 
tions. Until recently it has been very difficult to 
reach. The Grasse River lumber railroad from 
Childwold, which is the only direct route from the 
east, is but a three-year-old. Also the beauties 
of Cranberry are all of the quieter type. Com- 
pared to the dignities of the Marcy group, Cran- 



158 THE ADIRONDACKS 

berry mountains are beneath notice. Compared 
to the open vistas and connected waters of the 
lake systems of Hamilton and Franklin counties, 
Cranberry seems but a moody and isolated sister. 
And, even more prejudicial to its fame, was its 
beginning. The lumberers did not clear the shores 
that were to be flooded, and until recently the 
beauty of its shore-line was marred by dead 
trees. But time has ameliorated that. Ex- 
ploration has put a hundred ponds upon the map — 
a hundred clear-water ponds that lie within six 
miles of the lake shores. The railroads will mag- 
nify the mountains, and the region will soon flow 
with milk (condensed) and money. Until the day, 
however, that the great public makes its discovery, 
the trapper will lay his traps, the fisherman cast 
his fly in the wildest section of the Adirondack 
Park. May the public rest in peace ! 

All of our information was ex post facto and 
very nearly post mortem, for I now have come to 
relate that which should not have to be related 
except of two youths who, lazy and swollen with 
good luck, threw caution to the winds. To say 
nothing of the waters ! 

But caution has never been a weakness of youth, 
and there were two extenuating circumstances. 
"VVe had come out upon the lake at the end of a 
long arm. Since the best of my inquiries had 
never disclosed a person who had actually seen 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 159 

the lake and since those inquiries had been fairly 
general, it seemed fair to argue that the shores 
might be untenanted. Further, the season had al- 
ready turned the Labor Day pivot after which 
home-seeking vacationists are happiest. Further 
still, I knew that there were a hundred and sixty- 
five miles of shore-line, so that it was quite mathe- 
matical to suppose that we might wander eighty- 
two and a half miles before we reached the village. 
Further still — but that was quite far enough. We 
decided to make a raft. 

Two articles of civilization which stand pre- 
eminent on our lists of supplies are nails and rope. 
If Robinson Crusoe knew anything about camping 
beforehand, I '11 wager that he saved nails and 
rope from his wreck before he began on the canned 
goods. We had enough of them. We also had 
enough wood and enough confidence in Luggins. 
So we firmly decided to make a raft. 

Luggins, the obliging, was distinguished from 
all other quadrupeds by a guileless faith in hu- 
manity in general, and especially in Lynn. In the 
West I have seen Lynn lead him along places 
where angels would fear to tread. In fact, Lynn 
has the same faculty of leading or misleading the 
less dumb animals. In our nursery days when it 
was time to put away the playthings, Lynn could 
have the party working for him after union hours 
as one of the rarer privileges. So it is not sur- 



160 THE ADIRONDACKS 

prising that an amiable horse should accede to his 
whims. I firmly believe that he could put a belt 
under Luggins 's belly, buckle him to a balloon, and 
fly over the Rockies with him, and never a com- 
ment from the horse. Accordingly we anticipated 
no trouble on the raft. This we now finally de- 
cided to construct. 

By nightfall we had built and floated the latest 
thing in boats, which we christened the "Aqua- 
tainia" for the same reason. It looked insub- 
marinable and impervious to storm. Our split- 
log platform took the place of boards, and our 
ground-cloth was substituted for the more forma] 
sail. If the Cranberry-lakers did not shoot us on 
sight, we were sure of considerable glory. For 
once we did not dawdle over coffee in the morning. 

Progress to the first point was slow. This gave 
Luggins opportunity to get his sea-legs on. His 
look was inscrutable. I never could decide 
whether, assuming that we were mad, he was com- 
mitted to fate and should make the best of it, or 
whether never having lost his life, he was fearless 
merely from inexperience. The jerks of our 
poling and the quivering of the structure when 
the breeze began to flap the sail disturbed him 
not a whit. It was tolerant of him, I say. 

Outside the sheltering point we were hurried 
at once into admiration of the lake and of the 
craft. Long stripling capes ran out into the 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 161 

water. Islands sat with graceful composure on 
the waves, and the even blue of the hills rose in 
the distance. The chug of a motor-boat came over 
the ripples. It pointed toward us. We were to 
be boarded by the curious. But much was to hap- 
pen first. 

We had by now progressed far enough from 
shore to expose ourselves to the freshening south- 
west wind. The force of this was sufficient to 
counteract all our efforts with the steering gear — 
a section of a sapling. At first gradually, but 
with increasing momentum our raft began to pat- 
ronize a course that would bring us with mathe- 
matical exactness upon the rocky shores of an 
island. We endeavored to deviate. The sail 
drew us like destiny. We took it down. Luggins 
was a sail. We couldn't furl him. The island 
neared. The surf, fully a foot high, was dashing 
upon its stern and rockbound windward. The 
voyage was following the classic tradition. The 
aroma of shipwreck floated from the beach. 

Finding that there was nothing to be done but 
wait the final shock, we bade Luggins be of good 
cheer and not give up the ship. At about three 
bells we struck, after which we led our fellow-ad- 
venturer off to enjoy the grass while we com- 
menced to look for a sail, between cursory inspec- 
tions of our isle. It was soon inspected. It 
covered an acre. It was a little further from the 



162 THE ADIRONDACKS 

mainland than we cared to swim with the horse or 
his load. There were two courses to pursue. We 
must either attract the distant motor-boat or defi- 
nitely decide to settle on the island. 

From time to time many 's the person who has 
saved our lives (cooks leading), and their names 
have gone unrecorded. But friend Howland 
emerges from the wrack of the unidentified, for 
it was he in a brave little ship that lifted us from 
the maroon. He had distinguished the horse from 
afar in mid-voyage, had witnessed our casting 
away, and had brought his craft to our assistance. 
He had a laugh at our expense, but we had so 
many other commodities at his that the ledger 
has never tallied since. Thus did the manner of 
our coming to Cranberry differ from the coming 
of most. 

With Mr. Howland to point out the polite inter- 
ests of the place, and a dazzling sun to deck the 
wild, our ride up the flow to Wanakena was glad- 
dening. Our host, tall, sunburned, robust, told 
us of bear-hunts and invited us to wait for the 
deer season. From his account the deer at Cran- 
berry did not stand upon etiquette, but intruded 
upon the hunters. One had to shoot to get rid 
of their importunities. It sounded for excitement 
very like gunning in an orphan asylum; but in a 
locality where most of one's energy in winter is 
expended in keeping warm, I suppose that obtain- 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 163 

ing one's daily food does not need excitement. 
Howland said that he would show us game if we 
would go with him to the Plains. We agreed to 
show him how a horse could act in the woods if 
he would pilot us to a few congeries of deer on 
the Plains. We appointed Sunday for the ex- 
change. 

The Oswegatchie River is a complete demon- 
stration of the art of curving. All the curves 
that Euclid knew and some that he dreamed about 
will be found on this river that runs around the 
hills. Howland had been used to slavishly fol- 
lowing it in his canoe ; Luggins opened his eyes to 
the art of annihilating space across country. 
When we got to the Plains there was n't a deer in 
sight. But we pitched the tent and busied our- 
selves about supper, and pretty soon the tawny 
ones began to appear like fireflies in a summer 
dusk. Exaggeration shall not figure in this chron- 
icle : I believe we saw only seven, which Howland 
declared was ''stingy little," but which we thought 
was very fair considering that the locality did not 
presume to be a zoo. 

The Plains are crossed by a couple of roads, but 
their wide treelessness, surrounded by hospitable 
woods, gives them a distinction shared by few 
regions. The plateau just this side of the Cascade 
Lakes, the plains of Kenwells, the plains of the 
Oswegatchie always impress one. It is the con- 



164 THE ADIRONDACKS 

trast with the deep wood that makes them so re- 
freshing. 

On another day we paddled miles above the 
rapids on the Oswegatchie. The trout season had 
joined the snows of yesteryear which made it 
actual pain to float over places where little 
streams, entering from mossy coverts, guaran- 
teed fish of reputation. In the near by and by we 
have planned a reunion with those fish. 

We were told to visit Star Lake, of which every- 
body speaks well, but there was real exploration 
at hand. Back from the shores of Cranberry lie 
pools of unimaginable loveliness. To many run 
trails, but there are many others which even the 
deer do not frequent. We came upon three shut 
in by tall spruce, windless and dark as magic, tarns 
of such serenity that to come upon them seemed 
a violation. 

With the fishing gone and the hunting not yet 
come, we were thrown upon the alternative of im- 
mediate further travel or of enjoying the lake as 
such. We could not leave it. The September 
days sharp in the morning and crisp at night had 
set all the colors flowing up the hills. Weeks be- 
fore in August the swamp maples had flamed out. 
But now the tuning up was over, and the great 
symphony about to begin. Here and there whole 
sugar-maples shone from the green, and groves of 
beeches were starting into yellows and bronzes 




Hanging Spear Falls of the Opalescent 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 167 

and golds. New variations of maroon sidled up 
to vermilions unabashed. The fulfilment was to 
come weeks later, so long and long is the autumn 
dream in these corridors of heaven. And to us 
this was almost the most beautiful part of it — the 
change from day to day so deliberate as to arrest 
belief in ultimate decay, so constant that each 
morning arrayed new panoramas of admiration. 

Cranberry Lake is large enough to make a sail- 
ing canoe worth the rigging, and its shores are not 
so funneled by high mountains as to flaw the wind. 
We put side boards and an eight-foot mast in an 
eighteen-footer, and cruised like lotus-eaters. 

Below the lake the Oswegatchie wanders around 
until it gets to a sixty-foot cascade. But Lynn 
and I decided that Buttermilk had been enough for 
us, and after one final ride about the lake with 
Mr. Howland, we set out from Cranberry Lake 
Village, eastward, along the line of the Grasse 
River Railroad for Childwold and points east. 

We left the smiling expanses of Cranberry and 
its hospitable neighborhood with the compunctions 
of deserters. After Labor Day in the remoter 
Park the philosophy of welcome undergoes a 
change. During July and August a transient tide 
inundates the famous centers, covers the outlying 
districts thinly, and even trickles into the ob- 
scurest comers. The tide is chiefly of new and 
thoughtless foamy people with whom the inhabi- 



168 THE ADIRONDACKS 

tants share their food and sometimes drink, but 
never their innermost thought. They live on the 
surface and in the pockets of these summerers. 
They serve obligingly, but also reserve much. 

The winter inhabitant is another man. He 
sloughs off the characteristics of a corner grocery 
and buds with the qualifications of a comrade. 
He knows everything of the woods; he has done 
everything that strong hunters do, and he is will- 
ing to tell you about it. There is also plenty of 
time because, barring a few chores, his next en- 
gagement is in the spring. Of course the younger 
men have the wood-chopping and ice-getting and a 
little hunting on their calendars, but even for them 
there are many days when the sole if almost con- 
tinuous duty is to feed sticks of white split wood 
into the stove. 

The calendar of an Adirondack citizen reads 
remarkably like an index to a vacation guide. For 
example : 

New Year's day ; getting in the ice ; sugaring off ; the spring 
drive (pulp-wood) ; trout season opens; digging-the-garden 
season opens; baiting-the-boarder season opens; summer 
guiding; deer season passes; bear season begins; fire-wood; 
Xmas. 

Nobody, I notice, has written a *'Boy Scouts 
in the Adirondack" series; for authors, after all, 
have a regard for their reputations and the pleas- 
ures of the park are too incredible for fiction. 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 169 

On the way out from Cranberry we met a good 
father, a Catholic sky-pilot who, instead of trying 
to convert Luggins to the Church, immediately 
plunged into a description of the best fishing-holes 
on Brandy Brook. This particular stream has 
received considerable homage in the literature of 
the country, for it seems to overflow with generous 
trout who are willing to sacrifice themselves at 
any time for the sake of a record catch. The 
Grasse River, along which we were expecting to 
travel, also presents opportunities for fish to 
broaden their lives, which, it is reported, they 
avariciously accept. Unfortunately, I cannot give 
either the confirmation or the lie to this rumor. 
We were both so perpetually under obligations to 
game wardens as well as to the wilderness, that we 
had no desire to poach. As Lynn said, it was only 
natural to desert your wife if she spoke unkindly 
to you, and a murder now and then relieved you 
from the stigma of pacifist, but no man with grati- 
tude in his chest would catch trout under-size or 
out of season. The Commission maintains nine 
hatcheries which pour fry into the brooks all over 
the Park, rendering it possible for thousands of 
fishermen to partly furnish their dinner tables 
free, with a prince's hospitality. The man who 
slaughters small fish steals twice, once from him- 
self and once from everybody else. 

The trip along the railroad was scarcely a tri- 



170 THE ADIRONDACKS 

umphal journey either for us or the Adirondacks. 
The sky-pilot, whose name I unworthily forget, 
cheered us with reminiscence and kindly gossip 
until he had to turn off toward a lumber camp, and 
we were warmer of heart for having been com- 
panions to him. The sight of this old man en- 
during what must have been considerable priva- 
tion for age was fortifying to the sterner virtues, 
and I '11 argue that he had some result from his 
impromptu sermonings in God's tabernacle. 

Along this railroad, as I say, the Adirondacks 
are neither water, wood, nor mountain. Inconse- 
quential hills rise, covered with a man-eaten for- 
est, and through and between wander discouraging 
waterways which own up to being neither swamps 
nor streams. A lumber company of the first di- 
mension has great private holdings hereabouts 
and is speedily exacting the uttermost of them. 
We walked between raw embankments cut for the 
recent railroad and at the end of the afternoon 
passed great brown plains on which deer were 
feeding. A few minutes brought us to Conifer, 
where a sawmill gormandizes night and day. 

At Conifer we found an interesting group of 
men, as the directors of lumbering enterprises al- 
ways are. The public estimation of a lumber-king 
is of a person who goes about surveying what he 
may devour at the expense of the people, the land, 
and the future. And the public has been too often 



UNCONSIDERED CRANBERRY 171 

right. But there is another side to the character 
— the growing side. Selfishness is becoming econ- 
omy; indiscriminate destruction is becoming se- 
lective conscription; the effrontery of theft, at 
least dissimulation. Legislatures are not bribed 
so openly or in such a wholesale manner as here- 
tofore; the eyes of the Commission are in every 
place. And some day — let us hope before all pri- 
vate holdings have been made a desert — scientific 
cutting will leave the woodland, not a forest fire 
trap, but a thing of beauty — and of dividends. 

At Conifer the company maintains a good hotel, 
which is a thing to know. In winter the whole 
process can be watched to the most enjoyable ad- 
vantage; the selected tree, the falling-place pre- 
pared, the sawing, and the fall, the trimming, and 
the cutting into logs, the skid-way to the train, the 
water, and endless chain, and the little door into 
the mill, through which enters the log that comes 
out board. The men working in the snow have 
the longest hours of any in our country — twelve, 
usually, with half an hour for dinner. But they 
do not seem to be a complaining or a striking set, 
probably dreading a sixteen-hour night more than 
they would relish an eight-hour day. They are 
men with a handsome muscle, not over-young, for 
a boy under thirty cannot stand the labor. He 
must be well set. Their food is good. The ad- 
venturous used to run away to sea, but not in the 



172 THE ADIRONDACKS 

desperation of logic. And it would have been bet- 
ter for many of them if they had run to wood. 
The forest is austere, but it does not retaliate. 

At Conifer the voice of the map was again 
heard. The summer had gone, and we had yet 
to see almost all the famous sections of the Adi- 
rondacks. So we eliminated Lake Massawepie 
from our consideration, and a further acquaint- 
ance with Big Tupper also, and after revictualing 
at the company's store we dived once more into the 
woods, intending to come out upon the paradise 
that made Paul Smith. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 

IT was annoying to find how blind we were. 
Every pond shore, every beech-grove, and 
tamarack swamp besought us to look and to look 
sharply. When we did look, we invariably saw 
something, but our eyes soon filmed again, and 
our conversation hazed off into space. You will 
find that it is much more difficult to discuss the 
visible than the invisible if you ever pause for a 
moment in your discussion of the wrongs of pov- 
erty to bandy technical terms about any feature 
of the marvelous machine which is the world. A 
spellbinder who finds sermons all too short for 
his remarks about our glorious inomortality might 
be seriously stumped if asked to confine his reflec- 
tions to the wild-flowers that adorn his pulpit. 

I am beginning to believe that the speculative 
spiritualities can wait upon the spiritualities-at- 
hand. It seems almost as worthy a worship to 
sing, *'I admire and praise thee, winter wren," 
as to sing, *'I admire and praise thee, God," 
because the chances are that you are more intelli- 
gently sincere. If this is exaggeration, it is nec- 

173 



174 THE ADIRONDACKS 

essary to emphasize the fact that our physical and 
spiritual eyes function such a small part of their 
possibilities. For, leaving out the worship, to see 
nature requires more eyesight than is usually ex- 
pended. Read Muir, Audubon, Thoreau, and Bur- 
roughs, and realize how much of every day is left 
unseen. When Lynn and I found out by some un- 
usual spasms of attention how much of the main 
spectacle we were missing, we set ourselves to 
seeing. It annoyed us to find how blind we had 
been. 

One of the best tests for blindness that any one 
could devise would be a week or, better yet, a 
month in the North Woods. There are a hundred 
kinds of birds there in the spring and forty sorts 
of mammals the year round, yet how many does 
the average tourist see? During the first two 
weeks of our trip Lynn and I saw a chipmunk, a 
squirrel, and a mosquito. We knew there were 
deer, and we heard the frogs. If it hadn't been 
for some extremely interesting noises and some 
tracks, we might never have wakened up. As 
Lynn very properly put it, it was we who were 
extinct. 

But down in the Cedar River country, where it 
is wild enough for anything to happen, we thought 
we heard a panther. We were sure we saw a wild- 
cat. These amateur beginnings wore responsible 
for some later study. We got out the books. We 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 177 

followed tracks till our noses began to point. We 
set night cameras and talked with old guides and 
trappers. From them, chiefly, and from Merriam, 
this chapter issues, and not from our pitiful obser- 
vations only, as I wish it could. Dr. Clinton Hart 
Merriam in his rides and hunts among the moun- 
tains saw thirty-nine kinds of mammals, and if a 
man keeps his eye open, he may do nearly as well. 
We thought that we did well to increase our four 
to twenty-four. The list of possibilities follows, 
for hunting, even with a pencil and check-list, is 
still the royal sport. 

There are three quadrupeds that prey upon the 
imagination — three that gentlemen of the wild 
long to have encountered or to have seen : the wolf, 
the panther, and the wildcat. 

The thirst for wolves is the fault of fairy tales, 
I suppose. To lay a foundation for veracity at the 
outset, I must say that we saw none. The wolf is 
definitely gone from the Adirondacks. The last 
one, old and yellow-fanged, was killed near Bran- 
dreth the year of the Chicago Exposition. The 
deer of the Park are forever safe from them. But 
during the boyhood of many living guides, they 
were a pest. One howler would sound like a pack ; 
a pack of six like perdition. They stole venison 
from camps; they destroyed great numbers of 
deer, helpless in the snow. It took large quanti- 
ties of hares, frogs, mice, and skunk to maintain 



178 THE ADIRONDACKS 

them in their gauntness. But they are gone, and 
great romance somehow perishes with them. 

The panther, too, is almost certainly among the 
missing. I would like to be corrected, to be told 
(with proof) that in the fastness of the western 
plateau or on the ridges of the high east panthers 
still scarred the flanks of deer which in their deca- 
dence they missed. But it is a forlorn hope. 
Even the panther is a trifle moth-eaten and forlorn 
when looked at in the scientific glare. He is a 
coward; he does not lurk on horizontal branches 
of big trees to fall upon his paralyzed victims ; he 
does not even make night hideous for belated trav- 
elers or twilight children by blood-curdling yells. 
He leaves that to the loons or the owls or the 
rarebits in which the raconteur has been indulg- 
ing. And even if he had slain somebody, he 
wouldn't sling him over his shoulder and start 
for his lair. He would drag him to a fallen spruce 
or other covert and eat him up bit by bit, a child 
lasting, I presume, about two days, a deer nearly 
a week. The panther remains in the neighbor- 
hood till that particular ration is finished. Other- 
wise there would have been no catching him, for 
he can travel thirty miles a day. Some of the 
leaps that the panther made, measured in the 
snow, were enormous. On one occasion he cov- 
ered forty feet on the third bound toward a deer, 
and on the record jump, which was from a twenty- 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 179 

foot ledge, he sprang sixty feet, knocking his prey 
a rod. It is the men who have shot panthers and 
have lived where they abounded who assert that 
panthers do not yell. Unfortunately this is at 
variance with good fiction. Bounty was paid on 
forty-six panthers in the Adirondacks in the ten 
years following 1871. As yet I have been able to 
get no information as to a single child or man 
having been carried off by the tawny cat, but I 
still have hopes. 

There are two lynxes, the Canadian loup-cervier, 
and the ordinary wildcat of the story for boys. 
The Canadian lynx rarely comes as far south as 
the park, and the wildcat finds the climate too 
severe or else the supply of barnyard fowl too 
scarce. The lynx haunts the deep forest, while 
the wildcat is satisfied with the wood-lot if it be a 
good-sized one. Whatever it was that Lynn and 
I heard, it was probably neither. 

During the fifties moose were shot in the north- 
west Adirondacks, the last recorded killing being 
in 1861. The moose is another animal that will 
probably never again thrive in these mountains 
because it demands large range. Their food is 
lily-pads, browse, and bark, and the nearness of 
men worries them as it does not at all the deer. 

But there are two large animals that are numer- 
ous, and a third that promises to be : the deer, the 
black bear, and the elk. This last was an old resi- 



180 THE ADIRONDACKS 

dent. Occasional horns of the elk have been un- 
earthed, and in the thirties hunters were still 
taking shots at the living elk. Recently elk 
brought from Wyoming have been liberated and 
are reported as increasing. There is no reason 
why the excess wintering in Jackson's Hole should 
not be brought in numbers to their old habitat. 

The bear in the Adirondack Park is not nearly 
so decorative as in the Yellowstone, where he can 
be seen indulging his predatory instincts upon 
empty prune cans. Once a cub ran across the 
road almost under Luggins's nose. But while 
Lynn and I came upon bear sign and bear robes, 
and captured bear cubs, and even bear tracks in 
our Adirondack wanderings, we never yet have 
seen the bruin. But many a better hunter has n't 
either. The surest way is to set out deliberately 
with either spade or gun for him. He homes in 
the most recessful forests, and his hearing is so 
acute that a mere stalker has not a tenth the 
chance that he has with the deer. 

To the guns of the old guides many a fat bear 
has fallen. Just last autumn LeGrand Hale of 
Keene Valley killed one so large and so fat that 
he could pull the fat off in layers. When tried 
out, it filled several gallon jars. And in the wil- 
derness about Cranberry Lake dozens of bears are 
killed every year. There is a great difference of 
opinion as to the palatability of bear-meat, which 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 181 

itself varies considerably with the age and season. 

I have always wanted to find a bear's holing-up 
place. They tell me that these dens vary in elab- 
orateness, from an impromptu shelter under a 
fallen spruce to an excavation in a hill lined with 
moss, depending upon the expected severity of the 
winter. It is my contention that bears, with the 
rest of the animal tribe, can have only the dimmest 
apprehension of atmospheric states to come, and it 
is easier to believe that a bear is driven to shelter 
only by the failure of the food supply or the actual 
deepening of the snow covering. Hibernation is 
merely nature's economy, the prolonging and in- 
tensifying of our own sleep to offset the high cost 
of hunting nuts. 

A bear 's menu is varied and continuous, I should 
judge, for how else can a half ton to a ton of meat 
be kept warm? It would read: 



Ant eggs and the ants 



Berries on and with the bush 



Fish Frogs Turtles 



Poultry 



Pig, sheep, calf 
Vegetables Cherries 



The Bee, the honey, and the honeycomb 



Sweet apples 



Mice Acorns Crickets Grapes 



182 THE ADIRONDACKS 

It would be discouraging for mere man to collect 
a meal like that from a not too productive wilder- 
ness. Pity the poor bear! 

Lynn and I were assured in several quarters 
that bears would never molest a man unless the 
young were threatened. There is no animal in 
the Adirondack Park that does not obey the same 
ruling. I only wish it were as true of the insects. 

There is only one species of bear found in the 
Park and that is the black. It must take a good 
many females lurking in the fastnesses to perpetu- 
ate the race. Each mother brings forth two or, 
at most, three cubs at intervals of two or three 
years. These are so very infantile, being as small 
as squirrels when bom, and requiring forty days 
for their eyes to open, that the animal deserves 
the highest tribute for exercising the intelligence 
to escape extermination. 

The Conservation Commission through its 
game-wardens, reports that the deer of the Adi- 
rondacks roam about in greater numbers than ever 
before. There are good reasons for this. The 
Indian no longer has his autumn drive; the wolf 
and the panther do not decimate them in the snow ; 
the game hog can no longer fatten upon his slaugh- 
terings unpenalized. The feeling among lumber- 
jacks has perceptibly changed; and soon the set- 
tler, even if he were unwatched, would hcitate 
to kill more than his need because of the growing 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 183 

sentiment for conservation. The result is finan- 
cial gain. Thousands of sportsmen, whose license 
fees and patronage have transformed the status 
of the inhabitant, kill their thousands of deer. 
But the laws are so wisely written and so well 
observed that the wilderness, instead of being a 
shot-out region, fairly struts with does and is well 
peppered with bucks. In every Garden of Eden 
there is tlie fool, but while he still strews bean- 
cans about, still leaves his camp-fire smoldering, 
he is learning to look for horns and not to shoot 
at the first bit of khaki that he sees. The fool 
learns only by compulsion, as the poacher by 
prison bars. We owe it to the splendid supervi- 
sion by the Commission that the Park is anything 
but a treeless, gameless expanse of melancholy. 

During our peregrinations we saw deer in al- 
most every conceivable circumstance: standing 
rump-high in water, jumping twelve-foot bushes, 
descending precipitous, rocky banks that de- 
manded caution at every step, standing at atten- 
tion, running beside a fawn, swimming, waist- 
deep in snow, sizzling in strips over October coals. 
But I have never seen one asleep, although they 
probably indulge. Once we pitched our tent by 
a runway, and the first night we were aware of 
passing inquisitors. Once we made a salt-lick 
near a permanent camp — this is a highly illegal 
thing to do, we afterwards found, even for photo- 



184 THE ADIRONDACKS 

graphic purposes — and within ten days the ground 
was stamped as bare as a barn-yard, the salt-im- 
pregnated trunks licked bare of bark. 

The chief surprise to me is always the length 
of the deer's tail. When held over its back, as in 
flight, it wig-wags truce in capitals. 

Deer eat, I believe, about everything that grows 
from Mother Earth ; lily-pads and berries in sum- 
mer, nuts in the fall, and twigs and lichens in the 
winter. During summer it takes only half an eye 
to discover the creatures along the water-courses 
of a morning or evening, but after the beeches 
start to change, they gradually mount the ridges. 
In the severest weather they again come down 
to the frozen lakes and subsist on the thick fringe 
of trees at the margins. I used to believe that the 
deer-yards one reads about in boy-hunter stories 
were carefully trampled enclosures, surrounded by 
rows of lynx and catamounts grinning hungrily 
upon the herd huddled in the geometrical center. 
Deer-yards are more nearly trails formed by the 
restless browsings of the ill-fed animals. They 
stay in one locality till the browse is gone. You 
can easily see where they have slept. 

The Virginia deer, which weighs about two hun- 
dred and fifty pounds in the Adirondacks, two hun- 
dred in Virginia, and one hundred and fifty in 
Florida, has an excessively busy time of it in 
changing his appearance. As a fawn, he is 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 187 

spotted for three or four months — the most beau- 
tiful little thing in the world. As an adult, he 
grows antlers for three months, rubs the velvet 
off, and then sheds them in about four more. 
Meanwhile his coat changes from reddish in the 
summer to bluish in the winter. The bucks be- 
come bull-necked and obstreperous in the rutting 
season, November. The does usually have two 
fawns. 

I have heard of no instances where man has 
tried poison upon the deer, but every other means 
has been taken to rid the Park of this malicious 
animal. If you have an ounce of sportsman blood 
(but only one) in your body, you wait till March 
snows accumulate to the height of the deer and a 
crust forms. This the deer breaks through, but 
you, on snow-shoes, do not. Then you run along- 
side the ferocious and big-eyed doe until its heart 
breaks, and you can take it safely. Another, less 
fatiguing method, is to make a salt-lick and snipe 
at the beasts. Another is to unleash some dogs, 
pick out a comfortable spot, and wait until they 
drive the deer into the lake. This is tedious, but 
sure, as the only way the deer can shake the dogs 
is to take to water, and the hunter can then butcher 
her at his pleasure. A fourth method necessitates 
sitting in a boat for an hour or more while your 
fellow sportsmen paddle you around, the boat 
being screened from the deer's sight by the glare 



188 THE ADIRONDACKS 

from a jack-lantern or sheltered torch. When the 
brute of a deer stands inquisitive and lovely, you 
shoot her down at close range. 

But all this has been changed by law. Instead 
of does as well as bucks being killed in or out of 
season by these lazy and unsportsmanlike methods, 
now only bucks with horns can be secured and then 
only within well-defined seasons by the one self-re- 
specting mode of hunting, called still-hunting. In 
this game you carry your own gun, stalk through 
the forest in daylight, and endeavor to see farther 
and hear quicker than this most gifted animal. If 
you can trail him to his thicket, keep always down 
the wind from him, and at the end refrain from 
shooting if his head is not to your fancy ; then you 
are a huntsman who deserves the name. 

One of the greatest excitements of our trip was 
caused by our first beaver-dam. We had not 
known that the beaver had returned to the Adi- 
rondacks. We came upon the dam in deep woods 
while we were making a short cut above Specu- 
lator and fancied callowly enough that a discovery 
was about to be launched among admiring natu- 
ralists. Even when some profane reflections upon 
beaver had been delivered to us by a Park farmer, 
our satisfaction was only slightly watered. But 
when, in after-weeks, we were forced to long de- 
tours or parlous wadings, our interest in this 
devilishly industrious beast changed and waned 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 189 

until we fell into active sympathy with the irate 
farmer. There is no doubt that in some parts of 
the Park the beaver has become a pest. 

It is possible that the race of beavers never 
completely died away. But even in the thirties 
they were rarer than wolves in the eighties. One 
was caught in 1837, one in 1841, one in 1880 in 
the Raquette. A few years ago a pair were liber- 
ated and protected, and as each mother bears four 
a year, and as the country was full of their chief 
food, the poplar, the family spread like Noah's 
after the flood. Already a few have had to be 
removed by the Commission in the Fulton Chain 
region and in a few years more there can very 
easily be allowed a short open season. It is no 
wonder that the Iroquois called this region the 
Beaver Hunting Country. The New Netherlands, 
according to the eye-witness, Adriaen van der 
Donk, furnished eighty thousand skins a year. 
There was some excuse for beaver hats being the 
style. 

It is an amazing and elusive creature, this flat- 
tailed rattish-looking gnawer. His dam is com- 
prehensible, his house possible, but the size of the 
trees he cuts down, the science of the felling, the 
laborious chopping into size, the carting to the 
pond — these things astound one. The dams come 
any size. They are packed hard by industry 
and the stream's current, and upon them you 



190 THE ADIRONDACKS 

may find the foot-prints of other animals. They 
often form a highway across a swamp. The house 
is an apartment house, with sometimes as many 
as four families on the two floors. It is store- 
house, shelter, school-house, and dormitory. 
When actual winter commences, it freezes as hard 
as cement and must smell like a tenement. 

The beaver's food is chiefly poplar, birch, and 
alder bark with leaves. The cut trees always fall 
toward the pond. The beaver's tooth must be 
the hardest in nature to withstand the perpetual 
chiseling. I have seen birches nine inches across 
that had been felled by the sweat of their jaws. 

Dusk and dawn are the only times to see the 
beaver at work, and that requires the utmost pa- 
tience and secrecy. Twice we came upon the head 
of a beaver swimming slowly up-stream, and each 
time did he duck without that romantic sentinel 
shot from the flat of his tail. But such alarms are 
not fiction. There has, however, been plenty of 
fiction written about this most unobserved animal, 
Pliny perpetrating the worst. When Mr. Leacock 
wishes inspiration for more nonsense novels, he 
can easily score another bull's-eye by shooting at 
the broad absurdities of the ancient and dena- 
tured naturalists. 

There is one animal in the Adirondacks that the 
blindest, be he unable to distinguish between a 
chipmunk and a red squirrel, cannot miss. He 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 191 

makes a track like a little old baboon, bear- wise ; 
he chatters at night, conversationally if pleased, 
and angrily if disturbed. He weighs about fifteen 
pounds, advances sluggishly toward you, but re- 
treats at a good pace if you chase him. He will 
sell his spines for salt. And now you know for 
certain what you had already guessed. 

Whether it was the salt that we kept for Lug- 
gins, or just because we were easy marks and 
they knew it, I cannot tell. But Lynn and I cer- 
tainly put up with a plague o' porcupines. At 
first we shooed them away and then we killed them. 
Their choicest hour was two a. m. This is un- 
usual, for most animals, popular opinion to the 
contrary, are not mid-nocturnal, but fonder of 
the dimness before dawn and after sunset. Two 
A. M. to an accompaniment of rattled pans is an 
aggravation that we discouraged with axes, with 
a gun, with fires. But still came the porkies, and 
still we buried them intact, until we were admon- 
ished to try their livers. Do it yourself ; they are 
delicious. 

There is no earthly reason why pores of the 
wild wood should not make delicious eating, if 
properly treated. Their food is hemlock bark and 
the ends of birch and maple branches. They will 
strip a hemlock before leaving it. One is easily 
passed by for a crow's nest lodged in some dim 
crotch. Indeed, his only enemies are man and the 



192 THE ADIRONDACKS 

big owls, and I fail to see how they can make much 
of him. 

Much armament has made the porcupine stupid. 
One night I heard one in our tent, scared him up 
a tree, and being too lazy to get him then, tied 
a bath towel around the trunk and threw an extra 
log on the fire. The silly beast stayed up in the 
tree all night. "Why they always began operations 
on the aluminum pans was something that I never 
could guess. They were less salty than other 
things and always woke us. We dreaded a chase 
in the dark, but still more we dreaded to kill one 
in the tent, for it meant avenues of quills to be 
dis-encountered for days after. 

Some of the quills on the larger 'pines are two 
inches long, of a beautiful black-and-whiteness 
and savagely barbed. They will work through 
anything, but an armor-clad, because they will go 
only one way and muscular action impels them. 
They cause inflammation, but not death to an- 
imals. It is not unusual to find quills imbedded 
in their flesh. The tail is capable of filling your 
hand or your dog or your shoe with a score of 
quills, each one of which is a separate torture to 
remove. If you add to his munition factory, his 
disagreeable odor, his ability and ambition to 
gnaw down your house, his abominable persever- 
ance, you have a sufficient reason to abjure him. 
But he is so unusual that it would be a pity not 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 193 

to have him at least represented in the big woods. 
There is plenty of room. I have never seen the 
little ones, but they must make cute little pin- 
cushions. 

While discussing black and white, one cannot 
pass by the skunk. The black of him is particu- 
larly handsome, and when the rare one, lacking the 
white stripe, is found, it is probably sold for some- 
thing else. It is a matter for pity that the beast 
is not formed on more graceful lines, as we have 
the evidence of all skunk-farmers and some photo- 
graphs of Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton's to show 
that they make gentle and cleanly pets. Dr. Mer- 
riam kept ten such pets, and they liked to be ca- 
ressed and never tried to bite, not to mention 
offering more painful familiarities. It is possible 
to remove the scent bags without injuring the an- 
imal, a precautionary measure, for if too suddenly 
approached or accidentally injured, they have been 
known to assume the offensive. 

Like porcupines, skunks have grown careless 
of danger because of danger's regard for their 
defense. They walk abroad, slowly and brazenly, 
at dusk and dawn, and it is for pedestrians to get 
out of their way. Sometimes automobiles cannot 
do this in time. 

Although vast numbers are taken for their skins, 
the skunk persists, thanks to the eight or ten 
skunklets that infest the home each spring. It 



194 THE ADIRONDACKS 

must be presumed that a rather strict discipline 
prevails within the hole. 

Dr. Merriam, having eaten the flesh of skunk, 
cooked in every style, asserts that it *4s white, 
tender, sweet, and is delicious eating. It is not 
unlike chicken, but is more delicate, and its taste 
is particularly agreeable." Chickens feed upon 
bugs and worms, so there is no reason, I suppose, 
to be squeamish about skunk, whose food is chiefly 
grasshoppers, frogs, bird's eggs, beetles, and 
other insects. Objectors please reflect upon the 
source of their breakfast bacon. 

Dr. Merriam 's dissection of the animal's de- 
fense is very interesting: 

His chief weapon lies in the secretion of a pair of anal 
glands that lie on either side of the rectum and are imbedded 
in a dense gizard-like mass of muscle, which serves to com- 
press them so forcibly that the contained fluid may be ejected 
to the distance of 4 or 5 meters (13 to 16 V2 feet). Each 
sac is furnished with a single duet that leads into a prominent 
nipple-like papilla that is capable of being protruded from 
the anus and by which the direction of the jet is governed. 

Dr. Wiley of Block Island * ' distinctly perceived 
the smell of a skunk, although the nearest land 
was twenty miles distant." 

A skunk cannot be killed by a rifle-ball through 
the heart, or by the cleanest stroke of an ax, with- 
out discharging its scent. But if its back is broken 
by a sharp blow, not a drop will be emitted. The 



— ie 





^K* 



.--r^ 



t-i 







1 




ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 197 

spinal cord's fracture is the only way to preserve 
skin and meat. Contrary to popular belief, a 
skunk, even in a trap, may be safely approached 
if he is not excited or hurt. 

In our forest travels Lynn and I came upon 
very few skunks, and we never tried even the most 
unexcitable approaches upon them. As the black 
and white beauty lives chiefly upon meadow-prod- 
ucts, he is as scarce as many a wilder animal in 
the deep woods. But like his unique and spiny 
neighbor, I hope that he will continue to inhabit 
them in reasonable numbers. 

Whatever may have happened to all the other 
kinds of foxes that once denned in the wilderness, 
the ordinary red fox is the only one that is to be 
seen now, I believe. And his bark is more noticed 
than his brush. Like the skunk, he frequents the 
edges of the wilderness in greater numbers than 
the interior, because chickens are more easily 
caught than squirrels, and field-mice are more 
numerous than their woodland brothers. Next to 
the bear there is no animal whose tastes are so 
catholic; fish, muskrats, eggs, even young lambs, 
and strawberries make equally acceptable fox food. 
And ^sop's choice of grapes was not the fabulous 
part of the fable. 

The fox's curiosity is matched only by his cun- 
ning or he would not survive. Time and again we 
found his tracks in the snow, wandering out of the 



198 THE ADIRONDACKS 

wood, following some lumberman's or hunter's 
trail for a mile and then, his own satisfaction hav- 
ing been attained, disappearing. In our summer 
camps we heard him bark on the shores of many 
a pond. Once right around from our tent in a 
cove a fox stood on the shore and barked at some 
young sheldrakes, feeding out of reach, whether 
from disappointment or mere puppy fun we could 
not determine. 

It is far easier to find a fox's burrow than a 
bear's, but one actually meets with more bear 
cubs on exhibition than the more lovely and beauti- 
ful offspring of Eeynard. Unfortunately young 
foxes soon begin to practise treachery and other 
Punic virtues. But they are marvelously beauti- 
ful in their tawny and white shapeliness. It is a 
pity that the too vivacious as well as the too good 
should have to die young. 

Still rarer in the greenwood and even commoner 
on its outskirts, is the always-old-gentleman wood- 
chuck. From a broad meadow as many as thirty 
can be trapped in a summer, and yet the supply 
never totally fails. A pair usually have four or 
six young a year. 

Despite his distaste for the pathless and clover- 
less woods, Lynn and I came upon a hermit of a 
'chuck who had made his burrow under the sill 
of a guide's cabin twenty-two miles from the near- 
est field. It was in August, and Arctomys (as we 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 199 

called him after his scientific surname) came out 
only in the hottest hours of the afternoon. What 
he fed upon, we never could determine. The guide 
had a little garden. The deer jumped the fence 
and ate the lettuce, but we never discovered as 
much as one print of Arctomys' plantigrade paw 
in it. He probably ate the potato tops after the 
skunks and porcupine had finished eating the bugs. 

'Tomys appeared as intelligent as Alice's dor- 
mouse. He never formed an opinion about us in 
the three days we were there, always disappearing 
into his hole when we moved, always coming up 
in thirty seconds to see if we would move again. 
One rainy morning we set about dishousing 'Tom', 
but after digging under difficult circumstances for 
about twenty feet, Lynn said it wasn't a house 
but a subway, and we decided to leave natural 
history to the naturalists. 

The woodchuck is a puzzle. How does an inert, 
undefended creature survive? Even his habits 
are unintellectual. He begins to dorm at the 
autumnal equinox when the fields are full of feed ; 
he wakes at the spring solstice when green grass 
is four weeks off and two feet under snow. He 
can climb trees only with a rush; he does not 
drink water; the most he can do to scare you is 
to whistle; he under-burrows whole fields and 
chuckles, as Mr. Corning remarks, '*to see a mow- 
ing-machine, man and all, slump into one of these 



200 THE ADIRONDACKS 

holes and disappear.'* He is excellent chicken 
food when hashed fine and boiled. And yet it is 
the woodchuck and not the wolf that inherits the 
earth. 

In the interior the raccoon is even rarer, though 
by journeying from clearing to clearing, these 
wanderers do get to most parts of the wilderness. 
His monkey abilities and foxy cunning avail him 
nothing if one sets out deliberately to get him. 
He will not run far before treeing and will always 
investigate corn on the ear, no matter how obvious 
the trap. His black-and-gray handsomeness va- 
ries much with the individual animal. 

The coon spends his days in solitude, high up 
in the hollow of some tree, but joins the family 
at night. Lynn and I had no chance to try the 
flesh of young coons, which is supposed to be 
pretty good. The two we found were very elderly. 

For the man who is not properly located for 
beaver, the muskrat forms an entertaining sub- 
stitute, and for all the commonness of the creature, 
there is a surprisingly widespread ignorance of 
his ways. On most ponds and every sluggish 
stream his trails, burrows, houses, or depredations 
will be found. Although he is the most trapped 
animal of our country, he persists partly because 
of a certain cunning and partly because it is not 
unknown for one couple to furnish a score or more 
of ratlets to the general horde each season. 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 201 

Muskrats are busiest at night, and any time that 
you are out for deer, you will be startled by the 
splash a self -launched muskrat makes. It is easier 
far to surprise them in the daytime than to stalk 
a beaver, but none the less a test of woodsmanship. 

A muskrat builds a house, not by careful 
masonry, as does the beaver, but by throwing to- 
gether as much water-plant roots and grass as he 
thinks he will eat during the winter and then re- 
siding in it. There are certain conveniences to 
life in the pantry, but certain inconveniences about 
devouring your shelter at the most unseasonable 
time of year. I never observed any particular 
storing of food inside, but Dr. Merriam says that 
in the north it is done. 

The easiest way to trap muskrats is to mine 
their trails, but their huts can be attacked in sev- 
eral ways. The skins are worth very few cents 
apiece, despite the fact that in one year half a 
million were sent to England. 

Luggins' road and ours was being continually 
enlivened by a lot of little animals, the common 
rabbit, an occasional and most startling hare, the 
friendly chipmunk, and the vociferous red squir- 
rel. Our camps were visited by mice — wood-mice, 
field-mice, house-mice, and, most charming of all, 
the long-tailed, white-footed mouse. 

The childlike notion of valuing creation on ac- 
count of size has waylaid us all. It is hard to 



202 THE ADIRONDACKS 

consider a mouse as interesting as a moose. The 
white-footed is in reality far more beautiful than 
any moose, just as the magnolia warbler is more 
beautiful than a buzzard, cinquefoil than sun-flow- 
ers, contentment than the most ravishing display. 
But it takes observation and reflection to make 
sure, and only after Lynn and I had set ourselves 
to seeing things instead of skipping from spectacle 
to spectacle, did we begin to enjoy the peculiar 
delights of the sights we had always missed. 
There were many mammals that persisted beyond 
the fringe of our vision — the shrews, moles, bats, 
flying squirrels. And there remained obdurately 
hidden the prowlers of the dusk, which we caught 
unsatisfactory glimpses of and which we traced 
in morning light, the fierce inhabitants of forests 
that made for them the most perfect home. 

The number of mink, otter, marten, and weasels 
that are concealed by Adirondack wilderness cover 
would probably astonish the trappers, and would 
certainly be a revelation to most tourists, who are 
not aware that such creatures are living in their 
midst. I shall never forget my astonishment at 
seeing a weasel chase a mouse about the corners 
of one of our camps or the interest of our first 
otter or the excitement of the young minks. These 
fairly common animals were not even known to me 
by name, at least as creatures that might cross 
our path, and the study of this submerged circle 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 203 

of nature was more thrilling than scrutiny of our 
better acquaintances. 

The little weasel is very small, and mice and 
moles are its chief victims, but the stoat, the white 
weasel of winter, with a long and wiry body, does 
not stop at huge rats. It is credited with being 
the blood-thirstiest creature alive, killing for the 
fun of it long after its hunger is satisfied. It eats 
only the blood and brains of the chickens, squir- 
rels, and rabbits. Its beady eyes and cruel snout 
are rather terrifying to a human from their in- 
human suggestiveness of rapacity. 

We had some good views of a mother mink and 
her four young that came out of their burrow at 
twilight and sometimes in broad afternoon and 
played about like cats. I never saw the mother 
bring any food, but we watched patiently enough 
to see her catch the fish that naturalists describe 
as her chief diet. 

The sport that we were most anxious to see was 
an otter sliding, for we found their tracks and 
what we thought was their slide, but we never 
found the animal in conjunction with his mud 
bank. Otter swim so well and will go under water 
for such distances that it is almost impossible to 
get a good view of them till after snow has fallen. 
Their fur is the most valuable of any of the Park 
beasts. The last report from a member of the 
Commission stated that the number of otter, as 



204 THE ADIRONDACKS 

of all the other fur-bearing animals, is increasing. 

This, then, is the tale of wilderness inhabitants 
to-day. Nobody will see a wolf or a panther or 
a moose or a wolverine, let him be ever so wide 
awake. But his vigilance may be rewarded by 
a glimpse of a wildcat, an elk, mink, otter, or 
black bear. On the edge of the wood he will 
find raccoon, skunk, woodchuck, and the gray 
squirrel. Even if he is a careless goer, he cannot 
fail to startle a deer, surprise the porcupine, be 
scolded by the red squirrel, and scrutinized by the 
chipmunk. His evening camp will be visited by 
mice, while the bark of the fox will come from 
across the pond lately made deeper by the beaver. 
And if perchance snow falls, mouse track and 
rabbit track will write continued stories for him 
in every direction, while the underways of mouse 
and mole and shrew cross in unsuspected numbers. 

One comes to regard the birds with affection, 
there seem to be so few in the deep wood, though 
the clearings know the old favorites. A white- 
throated sparrow in some lonely lowland place, a 
chickadee on some snowy peak, becomes for the 
moment a comrade. Even the ill-bred jay is wel- 
come about camp. There are over a hundred 
species that a man can count during the year, yet 
only a few of these stay for the long winter, and 
can be called Adirondack birds. 

One does not have to be a naturalist to become 




Photo by Warwick S. Carpenter 



AusABLE Chasm 



ANIMALS OF THE ADIRONDACKS 207 

acquainted with the wild creatures of the Great 
North Woods. Just to be a nature-lover is 
enough. It gives a thrill to twilight, the knowl- 
edge that they are there. Not to see them, except 
the rare shadow of some sleek body, only to hear 
occasionally some disembodied call in the dark, 
and yet to know that the ravines and lake shores 
are haunted by thousands of beautiful animals, 
draws the fringe of fairyland very close. And 
some day — who knows ? — out of the still great and 
mysterious reservoir of the north may come back 
the other beasts, the panther and the wolf. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 

THE crisp and stable autumn weather cast a 
glamour over our travels. Even Luggins, 
whose strong personality was always hinting at 
an untimely repose, accepted his pack with dignity 
if without ardor. Our mode of life had toned our 
muscles until a decent day's work was a positive 
gratification to the senses. Two days' cross-coun- 
try brought us from Childwold to Paul Smith's. 

Some men take their vacations in the country 
and in the deep woods because of their delight in 
the beauty and stillness and largeness of open dis- 
tances, while others travel and cling to cities be- 
cause they are too lonely without the press of per- 
sonality about them. Dr. Johnson was as em- 
phatically of this type as Thoreau or Muir were of 
the other. Consequently we find the pages of one 
sprinkled with flowers and mountains with barely 
a hint of man unless it be of his imperfections, 
while the other's book is crowded with the street 
and there is never a glimpse of the sky. 

This relation between physical beauty and hu- 
man life was a topic that Lynn and I never got 

208 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 209 

quite tired of discussing before our evening fire. 
We always ended by agreeing that scenery should 
have only honorable mention if personality was 
competing. We agreed that we would rather see 
John Muir than all Alaska, much rather Cleopatra 
than the Nile. 

Because of this tendency on our part and be- 
cause we had already fed upon about as much 
scenery as we could hold, the northwest sector of 
the Park remains for me a beautiful, but unassert- 
ing, background against which stand out several 
amazing personalities. 

The background, however, remains fixed firmly 
in the memory of those days. The entire country 
is a maze of lakes and hills clustered about the 
Saranacs and the St. Regis. The hills only rarely 
earn promotion to mountainhood, but here and 
there majors are dotted about, with Ampersand a 
sort of brigadier-general to the south. 

While there is considerable cleared land for 
farms in the neighborhood of the railroads and 
villages, and while there is even a trolley, the 
country has only partly lost its claim to wilder- 
ness. Wealthy owners have maintained the 
wooded beauty of the shores that they own. Pre- 
serves show great continuities of forest. The 
Commission is buying in land at every opportunity 
and reforesting it. Only a little way back from 
the corner stores you can get your spiked buck 



210 THE ADIRONDACKS 

in the autumn. The advantages of not despoiling 
the wilderness further are so clearly seen that 
the tendency to keep and even extend it can be 
said to be under way. The period of exploitation 
is being succeeded by the age of conservation, and 
right glad were we to find it out. 

When Paul Smith died in 1912 he left an estate 
of 25,000 acres, which included ten lakes, a hotel, 
a casino, and outlying cottages and camps, besides 
much money in the bank. When he started life 
on the St. Eegis in 1859 he had a good physique 
a parent or so to help, and nothing else. Paul 
Smith, therefore, did his best to preserve the 
American tradition of the self-made millionaire. 
There were several reasons why he did not reach 
the White House and several more why he cannot 
even be called great. But his reputation will be 
long in fading away. 

Paul Smith's father was a New England lum- 
berman, and his son was twenty-seven years old 
before he decided that life on the other side of 
Champlain was not going to yield him the biggest 
returns. He had a passion for the outdoor life 
that was over and beyond his professional ardor. 
On a hunting trip into the Adirondack country his 
nature was so stirred by the amount of game and 
timber in the unbroken woodland that he decided 
to move over. This was accomplished a decade 
before Gettysburg, doubtless without much em- 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 211 

barrassment of paraphernalia. At no time in his 
life was Paul hindered in his movements by pianos, 
libraries, and works of art. He settled on Loon 
Lake. 

Soon he discovered the greater beauties of the 
St. Regis country and settled finally there in 1859. 
In those days the North Woods would have satis- 
fied a Muir for wildness and a Burroughs for 
beauty. Toll of the great trees had not been taken 
by lumbermen or fires. Sportsmen or summer 
tourists had not made inroads upon the wild life. 
Wolves were still howling, and the railroad was 
sixty miles from the cottage that Paul Smith built 
for his wife. Life there, particularly in winter, 
was an adventure not continuously easy. But the 
hazards and difficulties merely emphasized the dif- 
ferences from town life. Anybody who could keep 
up a contempt for loneliness could be fairly happy 
there with his dog and gun and wife. 

Paul Smith corresponded roughly to the popular 
conception of a British innkeeper, old style. He 
was large of build, ate largely, drank, but not too 
copiously, joked, but not too grossly. His humor 
apparently spared neither servant nor guest, yet 
it could not have offended, for from the first his 
boarding-house grew steadily. Like an English 
squire he would carve the roast and then go out 
(as no Englishman below a lord could ever do) 
and shoot the next meal from his porch. Dr. Tru- 



212 THE ADIRONDACKS 

deau gives an intimate picture in *'An Autobiog- 
raphy,'^ saying: 

I can see him in the center of the little dining-room, after 
having put out his hounds in the morning hunt, beaming with 
good nature and standing in his shirt-sleeves, with four or 
five dog chains still slung over his shoulders, carving the veni- 
son or roast for his guests and joking with everybody around 
him. 

It is not difficult to see why he should have at- 
tracted a clientele. He was an expert guide; his 
holdings ran with game; his wife saw to it that 
there was enough of the best to eat. It is diffi- 
cult to see, however, why a man like that, easy- 
going, good-natured, not too hospitable to the un- 
companionable virtues, should escape from being 
*'done." Many a rich man formed the habit of 
going into Paul Smith's for a little hunting. But 
nobody got the better of him in transactions. He 
took options on desirable lands before the capital- 
ists were quite sure that they were desirable. He 
bought the water powers on the Saranac Eiver 
before it was rated anything more than a stream 
to fish in. He gathered the leading guides about 
him, and his abilities over the learned and un- 
learned alike made him a trifle impatient with the 
world of books, arts, and universities. I cannot 
believe, however, that it was so much smartness on 
the part of this indolent and joke-loving woods- 
man that made him, bit by bit, the most influential 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 213 

landholder in Franklin County. I believe that it 
was his faith in his own desires that earned him 
the reputation for farsightedness. Obedience to 
this faith was the gospel according to Paul Smith. 

There is an inertia of content that sometimes 
moves one further along the road to success than 
will the most agile endeavors. Paul Smith sat 
still upon the acres that he had chosen for his 
heart's desire; his wife cooked appetizing meals, 
and the wealth of cities came to him and made him 
rich. He didn't sit with his eyes closed. But he 
sat, surrounded by the woods that he knew could 
not fail him, sure that some day his nature 's crav- 
ing for that sort of thing would be vindicated, 
world-style, by a bank account. His faith pulled 
through. 

That is what I mean by the gospel of Paul Smith. 
It may not be so noble as the inspired frenzies of 
his neighbor, John Brown, or the courageous ef- 
forts of his boarder, Edward Livingston Trudeau. 
But there was a moment when the young fellow 
had to decide whether or not to cast his lot in 
with the wilderness he loved. There were many 
moments, doubtless, when these race instincts 
seemed opposed to common-sense. But he stood 
firm. And it takes a great man to stand by his 
instincts. Nearly everybody does take thought 
for the morrow. 

It is a matter for regret that Apollos Smith did 



214 THE ADIRONDACKS 

not keep a diary. The span of his life in the 
woods bridged their entire modern growth. His 
encounters as a guide with wolves and catamounts, 
his experiences with Trudeau and Harriman, his 
love of the wild coupled with his acquisitiveness, 
would have shot off suggestions of the greatest in- 
terest. If he had had the introspection of a Tho- 
reau, the long winter nights in his greater seclusion 
might have furnished forth a greater Walden. As 
a matter of fact he spent them playing cards. If 
he had had the curiosity of an Agassiz, what 
might his rambles not have brought forth? But 
Paul Smith, as God created him, as the woods nur- 
tured him, and as the years brought him to a wise 
old age, was sufficiently distinguished. He would 
have been valuable enough in the almighty scheme 
of things if the only flowering of his life had been 
his kindness to Dr. Trudeau. 

Paul Smith's was the one place in the world 
where the "Beloved Physician" could be sure of 
recovering from the disease that nearly laid him 
in the grave each winter. Scarcely a chapter of 
his autobiography fails to mention the great pines, 
the beautiful lake to which the sufferer would be 
carried on a mattress by strong guides, and from 
which in a few weeks he could return, strength- 
ened, to his life work of strengthening others. In 
many a chapter there is tribute to the housewifely 
influence of Paul's wife, as well as to the sympathy 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 217 

and kindness that they and their sons extended to 
the Trudeaus in trouble. 

Trouble besieged the Trudeaus. The fight that 
the doctor put up against his illness for forty 
years would have been a sufficient example to the 
world of courage, a sufficient use for his life. But 
when one considers that without wealth or 
strength or scientific backing this man established 
the first line of defenses throughout our country 
in the war against tuberculosis, any words of ap- 
preciation or praise become puny beside the state- 
ment of the fact. Trudeau was born in New York 
City in 1848, and it is significant that his father 
was so devoted to wilderness life that his devotion 
to it wrecked his professional career. On one oc- 
casion he went off on a long trip with Audubon 
and is often mentioned in his work. Trudeau in- 
herited the passion for the outdoors and when he 
discovered, at the age of twenty-four, that he had 
tuberculosis, he determined to take to the woods 
where he could end his days hunting. 

The days, however, did not end. He regained 
enough strength to come back to his wife and 
child, and practised for the winter, only to have 
another collapse. Paul Smith's pulled him 
through once more, but his city life again nearly 
killed him, and after a try at Minnesota he moved 
his wife and children into Paul Smith's for the 
winter. 



218 THE ADIRONDACKS 

It seemed the most foolhardy of moves. Doc- 
tors were unanimous in declaring cold climates 
fatal to the tubercular. Paul Smith's, moreover, 
was sixty miles from the nearest doctor. But the 
spell of the place was so strong on the invalid, his 
faith in the efiSciency of that which he loved was 
so strong, that he profited by the winter. An- 
other chapter in the gospel according to Paul 
Smith! Instinct had brought to the first man 
wealth, to the second health, to both happiness. 

The next winter, because Paul Smith and his 
wife had bought a hotel in Plattsburg, Dr. Tru- 
deau and his wife took a guide 's cottage at Saranac 
Lake. It was a momentous step. Out of it grew 
the great sanitarium after which hundreds have 
been modeled, bringing relief to over a hundred 
thousand patients yearly. 

The story of the sanitarium, the struggles 
against prejudice, the lack of money and strength, 
the fire, and the death of a son and daughter are 
told with a moving simplicity in the autobiography. 
It is a heroic tale modestly put forth. There is a 
dual impression left on the reader. One reads 
with the apprehension of suffering on every page. 
But also on every page is the glow of unselfishness 
on the part of others. The book is illuminated by 
the doctor's long sacrifice, by the wealth of love 
manifested in many relations. 

His chapter about his most famous patient 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 219 

makes good reading, Stevenson having spent the 
winter of 1887-8 in the Baker Cottage. Trudeau 
says ''the impression of his striking personality, 
his keen insight into life, his wondrous idealism, 
his nimble intellect, his inimitable vocabulary in 
conversation, has grown on me more and more as 
the years roll by." Trudeau states how he and 
Stevenson continually had heated discussions be- 
cause their points of view were so widely at vari- 
ance. Other observers have told how these illus- 
trious gentlemen parted almost at the point of 
blows, only to patch it up next day. Each recog- 
nized the other's genius intellectually if not sym- 
pathetically. Each was not quite fair to the other. 
I have discovered no reference to Trudeau in the 
published correspondence of R, L. S., but his ob- 
servations concerning Saranac are of interest to 
remember when you are there. 

The place of our abode is Saranac Lake in the Adirondaeks; 
it is a mighty good place too, , , , It seems a first rate place; 
we have a house in the eye of many winds, with a view of a 
piece of running water — Highland, all but the dear hue of 
peat — and of many hills — Highland also, but for the lack of 
heather, 

I remain here in the cold which has been exceeding sharp, 
and the hill air which is inimitably fine. 

We are in a kind of wilderness of hills and firwoods and 
boulders and snow and wooden houses. , . , The climate is gray 
and harsh but hungry and somnolent. . , , The country is a 



220 THE ADIRONDACKS 

kind of insane mixture of Scotland and a touch of Switzerland 
and a dash of America and a thought of the British Channel in 
the skies. 



You cannot fancy how sad a climate it is. When the ther- 
mometer stays all day below 10 it is really cold; and when the 
wind blows, commend me to the result. Pleasure in life is all 
delete. There is no red spot left, fires do not radiate, you 
burn your hands all the time on what seems to be cold stones. 
. . . We like a room at 48; 60 we find oppressive. Yet the 
natives keep their holes at 90 or even 100. 

A bleak, blackguard, beggarly climate of which I can say 
no good except that it suits me and some others of the same 
persuasion whom (by all rights) it ought to kill. It is a form 
of Arctic St. Andrews, I should imagine, and the miseries of 
forty degrees below zero with a high wind have to be felt to 
be appreciated. 

These are the references to Saranac with a few 
others of the same purport; there is no news of 
Trudeau, no sarcasms at the expense of the many- 
visitors, welcome or unwelcome, no very loving de- 
scriptions of the beautiful barbarities about him. 
There is many an excuse. Stevenson was not 
really ill at Saranac, according to Trudeau, but 
half an invalid. He was there only in winter. 
His memories of the south of France were too 
vivid to allow an immediate transfer of enthusi- 
asm to **the insane mixture" of the old countries. 
From all these counts we know why the great ro- 
mancer has given us but thumb-nail sketches of 
this most romantic country. 

For there is one bit of history, at least, that 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 221 

transcends American fairy tale in its weavings of 
court and wilderness, royalty and Indian brave. 
A year before the French Revolution burst upon 
an astonished nobility there was formed in Paris 
La Compagnie de New York, an organization in- 
tended to forward some settlements already be- 
gun in Castorland, — as they called the Beaver- 
hunting Country, — a tract covering 610,000 acres 
from Lake Ontario eastward through Lewis and 
Jefferson counties into the heart of the wilder- 
ness. 

The Revolution of '93 gave impetus to the at- 
tempt, for the clergy and nobility of the old regime 
could put their only hope for safety in the very 
wildness of the banks of the Black River. A pros- 
pectus was got up, shares sold (fifty-acre lots for 
$150 each), and a commission came to America. 
A settlement was effected at Lyons Falls and an- 
other at the present Beavertown, then called Cas- 
torville. 

The commission finally despaired of success in 
the intractable wilderness, sold out to the Comte 
de Chaumont, who, employing Fenimore Cooper's 
father for an agent, built a chateau at Le Rayville, 
ten miles east of Watertown's present site, and 
there entertained the exiled nobility of France. 
One can only imagine the contrasting emotions of 
the courtiers' gold lace and the gaunt pines; of 
the gay repartee and the call of the great barred 



222 THE ADIRONDACKS 

owl mingling to make a fugitive princedom in the 
wild. 

Chaumont went back to France on a visit, and in 
the year of Waterloo, Joseph Bonaparte, who was 
looking for a bed of guaranteed repose, met him, 
dined him, and in the middle of the meal said : 

*'I remember well you spoke to me of your great 
possessions in the United States. If you have 
them still, I should like very much to have some 
in exchange for a part of that silver I have there 
in those wagons and which may be pillaged at any 
moment. Take four or five hundred thousand 
francs and give me the equivalent in land. ' ' 

The count gave him 118,000 acres about the pres- 
ent Diana, which name the King bestowed. As 
you can easily appreciate after seeing the country, 
rolling remorselessly in one little range after an- 
other, it was a land interesting to a hunter, but dis- 
appointing to one trying to plot out an estate. 
A friend wrote of the ex-monarch. "He regrets, 
notwithstanding that thus far he has been unable 
to find among the 26,000 acres of land, a plateau 
of 200 acres to build his house upon, but he intends 
keeping up his researches this summer." 

Bonaparte came over to Jersey and lived in the 
neighborhood of Bordentown. He built a hunt- 
ing lodge on the shore of his lovely lake on the 
Adirondack plateau. To-day it is on the western 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 223 

edge of the forest, but its clean rocky shores and 
charming islands still hint of the appeal it must 
have made to the royal fugitive. He put up a 
summer house where Alpina is now, and at Nat- 
ural Bridge on the Indian River he built another 
summer house with bullet-proof rooms which you 
can still see. 

At one despairing time the great Napoleon cast 
longing glances in the direction of his brother's 
forest freedom. Chaumont at his chateau near 
the Black River even discussed the project with 
Joseph and the son of Marechal Murat of having 
a concentration of Bonapartes on that river with 
the end of establishing vast interests to out-manu- 
facture England. What the State of New York 
(which passed a special act enabling the royal 
alien to hold real estate) would have said when it 
saw the indefatigable ex-emperor involving it in 
new disputes with Britain need not be imagined 
because the scheme was dismissed. St. Helena 
soon shattered the imperial will that might have 
changed American destinies from its new capital 
in the wilderness. 

Less dazzling, but more substantial, personali- 
ties have broiled their bacon by these northern 
ponds. A group of Cambridge friends spent one 
summer at Follensby Pond which is below Am- 
persand Mountain, and another on Ampersand 



224 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Pond. They bought 22,500 acres for $G00 and in- 
tended to philosophize there for their remaining 
summers, but the Civil War cut the philosophizing 
short. And now listen to the roll-call: Louis 
Agassiz and Wyman, his fellow-scientist, Gray, 
and Dr. Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes's brother 
John, Judge Hoar, Stillman, who tells us about 
it all, and Lowell, and Emerson. Longfellow 
wouldn't go because Emerson did. I am sorry 
for Henry W. 

Never since Omar outlined his program for a 
good rest in the wilderness with a little able con- 
versation on the side has the thing been pulled 
off so satisfactorily. If you can, imagine what 
they talked about while they were doing up the 
dishes. Cabbages and kings, no doubt, and also 
evolution and trout flies and the meaning of mean- 
ing. I suppose the paucity of literature turned 
out by this sparkling crowd of writers must be 
blamed on the dishes. However, it isn't every 
holiday diary that rests immortal as does Emer- 
son's ''Adirondacs.'* 

Unfortunately the cabin of the Philosophers' 
Club has disappeared, while Bonaparte's bullet- 
proof shanty, Paul Smith's hotel, Trudeau's sani- 
tarium, remain. But the beliefs strengthened by 
those visits to the wildwood: Agassiz 's faith in 
the conception of creation by design, Emerson's 
passionate search for the nature-powers behind 



G0SPI':L according to PATJL smith 227 

tho v(i\l — thcHo wiJl outlast hot^-ls or tlio nc^ifJ for 
Hariitaria. 

Tho i/jtoroHting but arduous overland trip from 
Childwold to Paul Smith's had loft LuggiriH vcr>' 
dcHirouH of roHigning from the party. So we 
housed him comfortably and expensively and took 
unto ourselves a canoe to see if we could recapture 
Bome of the pleasures of our Itaquette trip. The 
scene had changed. The woods were not only a 
riot of color; they were a rebellion in rainbow, a 
revolution in French shades. I did not know that 
so many variations of scarlet, mauve, vermilion, 
umber, purple, and apoplexy existed. I doubt if an 
artist could have spent two hours with us on that 
excursion and survived. The days, too, made for 
energetic paddling. They were short, but brisk. 

I^'rom Paul Smith's there are a score of ponds 
to visit and at least two continuous trips: the 
"Round Trip" by half a dozen little carries to 
Upper Saranac and back by some other carries; 
and the trip to Loon Lake. This latter we took. 
From Osgood Pond we paddled down a stream, 
which hadn't any right to the name, and into 
Lucretia Lake. 

Lucretia's endearing young charms are prob- 
ably a lure for mud-turtles, but the swamp grass 
and marshy shores scarcely hurry one into sub- 
limity. We passed an inhabitant dredging for 



£28 THE ADIRONDACKS 

fish, pickerel I suppose, although it was late for 
the best successes. He was drab and bedraggled 
and a comic contrast to the flaming landscape. 
But he had a restless humor underscored with 
drawl. 

*'Wa'al no," he replied, ''I ain't had what you 
might call luck. This pond 'ere used ter be called 
Jones Pond and yu' could get a nice bit of fish. 
But some of them city folks thought Jones was n't 
a swell enough name. So now they calls it Lu- 
cretia Lake, and the fish is got too fussy to take 
a holt." 

A short carry brought us to Rainbow Lake. 
Nobody who could see it on an October morning 
would change its name. The shores danced with 
color, and from an airplane the arc of the lake 
would make a charming silver bow. The three- 
mile paddle decided us upon lunch, and after that 
a succession of tedious and not too beautiful ponds 
landed us on Loon. The trip is not to be recom- 
mended for any particular satisfaction other than 
the one we had of having made the whole hundred 
and few miles from Blue Mountain, the longest 
straightaway in the Park. 

Ever since our first days in the Park I had been 
nursing a secret ambition to buy a little land, to 
plant one foot in Paradise. I had looked upon 
the landscape with two eyes, one for its beauty and 
one for its purchasability. Ruggedly had I re- 



GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PAUL SMITH 229 

framed from more than inquiry until I had seen 
the whole stock of goods; just as ruggedly had I 
examined much territory with care, determined 
that no supreme bargain should escape me. 
Therefore when we had arrived at Loon Lake, and 
the map revealed alluring expanses of wilderness 
still to the northward, I must needs see it. The 
water route had run out; Luggins was enjoying an 
earned vacation. So for the first time in eleven 
weeks we subjected ourselves to the mortification 
of a railroad ticket. It read to Lyon Mountain. 

The Chateaugay Lake country viewed from the 
railroad seems well covered with second-growth 
forest. The mountains are chiefly low rolling 
ridges. The two lakes join and afford a paddle 
of eleven miles. Their shores are beautifully 
wooded, and the views to the southward are 
sharply cut. It was satisfying to us to see this 
country, and we could believe the men we asked 
who asserted that the hunting and fishing to the 
west were as good as anywhere within the Park. 
But we did not buy. Neither did we (at that time) 
go on to Chazy Lake, to the east of which the coun- 
try rapidly flattens out to the plains around 
Plattsburg. Instead, the overwhelming homesick- 
ness for the woods that strikes hardest at the 
sight of a starched collar struck. We cut short 
our inquiries. 

Sentiment suggested one more excursion from 



230 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Paul Smith's — a drive in a buggy over to Saranac 
on the exact route that Trudeau had traversed so 
many hundreds of times in cold and heat, in all 
the urgencies of illness. Let the doctor speak of 
the situation of his sanitarium: 

Beyond a jutting projection of the hill was a little level 
piece of ground, my favorite fox runway, where I had spent 
many months while hunting with Fitz Hallock, which was 
always perfectly sheltered from both the south and west winds. 
Here the mountains, covered with an unbroken forest, rose so 
abruptly from the river and the sweep of the valley at their 
base was so extended and picturesque that the view had always 
made a deep impression upon me. Many a beautiful after- 
noon, for the first four winters after I came to Saranac Lake, 
I had sat for hours alone while hunting, facing the ever-chang- 
ing phases of light and shade on the imposing mountain pano- 
rama at my feet and dreamed the dreams of youth; dreamed 
of life and death and God, and yearned for a closer contact 
with the Great Spirit who planned it all, and for light on the 
hidden meaning of our troublous existence. The grandeur and 
peace of it had ever brought refreshment to my perplexed 
spirit. 

Saranac Lake Village is a city, now, and we were 
glad to leave it with our new flannel shirts in which 
we were intending to sport about on sterner 
heights. So regretting that we could not climb 
Ampersand or invest in a deer hunt in the north- 
west forest or allow Luggins further to indulge his 
passion for overeating at our expense, we left the 
great waterways of the Adirondack Park and set 
out for what might befall us in the mountains. 



CHAPTER X 

LAKE PLACID AND AN EXPERIMENT IN 
INTELLIGENCE 

OCTOBER had had but a short start of us, 
and the sun not any before we were pointed 
toward Placid. October's start was a bold one. 
The clear night had left a film of ice on the smaller 
ponds ; tiny streams breathed mistily in the woods, 
and along the road the frost lay audaciously in 
wait for the sunbeams. Clear coffee and fine air 
-put adventure in our blood, and our pace smart- 
ened as we went. Only Luggins seemed reluctant. 
Has nobody tried coffee with horses in the effort 
to eradicate a certain inertness? 

We were ready for adventure, but adventure 
never retired more coquettishly from road-curve 
to road-curve. We ceased to gaze wistfully 
ahead. No fox crossed in front of us; the birds 
had gone to Dixie. The whole landscape was 
waiting for something that did not transpire. 
Apertures in the woodway gave views of forget- 
me-not and forest green. The scents of sheltered 
sun patches drifted by us. But never a sound ex- 
cept of Luggins striking an occasional stone in 

231 



232 THE ADIRONDACKS 

the sandy road! So Lynn and I fell into an ap- 
propriate silence. It was no time, we instinc- 
tively felt, for incompetent comment on the uni- 
verse. 

Our map plainly pointed to the route through 
Gabriels, Harriettstown, Saranac Lake, and Ray 
Brook as the most plausible, even though it stood 
Luggins a good tw^enty-five miles. But to round 
Whiteface by Franklin Falls and up through the 
Wilmington Notch had the advantage of scenery 
and an extra day in flannel shirts. That decided 
us. 

To make a bare breast of it, a haze of distrust 
fell on us when w^e thought of surrendering to the 
club. To be sure, the Lake Placid Club had long 
been a name to us. Hearsay and inquiry had de- 
veloped its reputation till we had decided upon 
the ordeal of staying there a week. The neces- 
sary cards were in my treasure bag. But for all 
that, in our separate souls we hated to diminish 
our summer freedom by three nights in a bed. It 
was not that we had been too proud to wash ; we 
had despised to advertise in starch. All summer 
we had collaborated with comfort and wood-sense. 
We supposed that in a club, comfort must disap- 
pear before convention. Even for the purpose of 
investigation, which was a purpose become dear 
to both of us, we loathed the idea of being hustled 
into appearances for a club's sake. To forsake 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 233 

pine-needles for polished floors, an open fire for 
a radiator, camp costume for evening-dress — 
these anticipations threw ns into such a ditch of 
despondency that we seized upon the detour with 
vehemence. Our lightened hearts took us far 
down the Saranac. 

Of all the memories of that day, the green 
ranges ahead, the high ridges on the right, dip- 
ping to let Whiteface look over, the falls, the vast 
landscapes of brilliant foliage, the spell of the 
winding road, of all these entrancements there is 
one that struck deeper than all — the slim, elusive 
stream of the river, curving in amber shadows, 
lying at the feet of pointed firs, rippling in a 
break of light. Noon in such a place is more beau- 
tiful than moonlight in many another. 

We kept on till mountain shadows and airs, 
which shivered through disrobing birches, warned 
us of the piles of fire-wood needful for a long 
night. 

In the morning my thermometer registered 
twelve. Such tricks will clear air play at the alti- 
tude of two thousand feet. But we were not cold. 
If the breeze bit, his wound healed quickly. Lug- 
gins courted the ashes, but we each chopped a log 
in two and preached him a sermon upon the text. 
He listened in repose. 

More exhilarating than winning bets was it to 
wash one's face in the brooklet. The glow of the 



284 THK ADlHONDAtlvS 

new sun slant od through t'orosts of goKi-loaf, for 
wo had tontod in a gTovo o( booch. A broath was 
lifo, full auil unilisg-uisod. And lator. whou 
STUolls of breakfast tilled the wood, 1 doubt 
whether Adam's personal recollections of the new 
world could have been happier or more vivid. 

Up from the Saranac down to the Ausable, then 
the tlank of Marble ^lountain. a turn to the right, 
and we were confronted by the Notch. The AVil- 
mington Notch is the result oi' the west branch of 
the Ausable Kiver having its own way, cheese- 
knife fashion. It has also had its own time, for 
these are very hard mountains to cut through. It 
is still going at the job with energy. Above the 
notch it chatters, becomes more argumentative, 
and soon downright passionate, till in a great out- 
burst it thunders do^^^l and over at High Falls. 
And all the while it is gnawing at the Notch. Only 
a long way below the tlume does it tlow out into 
carved meadows, forgetful of precipices, black 
rocks, and the tangle of white waters. 

But more interesting than the falls and the 
gorge was the cold tlow of air from the tloor of 
the higher valley before us, and the sight of icicles 
that would so soon flower into the great winter 
stalactites. Winter had already established his 
depot. We were glad to come up into the smiling 
sun. 

As the mountain flanks parted, we came upon 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 237 

new and fairer views than any we had seen, splen- 
did prospects of valley floor, curving river, and 
distant ranges. Our hearts softened toward the 
club that could revel in such possessions. 

In barest terms the Placid valley is a low-undu- 
lating river-bottom, checkered with farms and 
woodland, and walled in on three sides by moun- 
tains, on the fourth by a brace of lakes. But the 
barest terms or the most minute descriptions 
would fail to convey the circle of landscape from 
the eye to the ear. So I can best report on 
an inspiration that fell upon us that autumn 
afternoon. 

We had come on our road to the man-proof 
fence that surrounds the Club precincts. A little 
runt of a mountain, which we afterwards found 
was called Cobble, rose invitingly at our backs. 
The sun slept on its bare top, which did not look 
more than ten minutes above us. We determined 
to spy out the land, tied Luggins to the gate, and 
in eight minutes by the watch were sitting on the 
top. 

It was the most astounding eight minutes' 
worth of climb that I have ever done. And many 
times since have I been up Cobble, once with thun- 
der stalking down the valley, often with the 
spruces showing black against deep snow, and al- 
ways there has been some measure of surprise at 
such a view from such a tiny hill. That first 



238 THE ADIRONDACKS 

largess of unexpected beauty laid hold of our 
hearts. We lay there gulping down the distrac- 
tions of its variety. 

Below us, calf-size, stood Luggins, patient with 
his pack, on the road that wound from the Notch 
which partly showed to the northeast. The Notch 
was steeped in shadow ; but the sheer range of the 
Sentinel Mountains, still lighted by the level sun, 
streamed southward from it, making a barrier all 
along the east of the valley, an abrupt limit to its 
beautiful floor. On the south the greater moun- 
tains. Elephant, Saddleback, Basin, Haystack, 
Tahawus, Algonquin, and colder Iroquois stood 
remote, but clearly high. On the west nearer 
mountains continued the valley 's wall to the break 
wherein the Saranacs lie. With the proper sun 
their glimmer can be caught. Again to the north- 
west McKenzie, Moose, and St. Armand rose pro- 
tectingly. In the north Whiteface, always noble, 
dominated. At his foot lay Lake Placid, balsam- 
girt, islanded. 

This then is the skeleton of the view from Cob- 
ble. But the form and flesh of the encircling 
mountains, the flow and color of the valley plain, 
these no drivel of words can in the least reveal. 

Reluctantly, we rose from the rocks. And 
shadowly we came down through the evergreen to 
Luggins, and raggedly did we file through the Club 
grounds, a maze of pine and balsam, and between 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 239 

snug cottages to Forest Hall. We presented our 
cards of introduction from a friend. At once 
were we received as guests within a family. 

It was evident that we had reached the unusual 
in clubs. Indeed, for a place where your precon- 
ception varies more widely from the reality, I 
know not where to look. Lynn confided to me 
that his first satisfaction was the broad hearth. 
We, in our flannel shirts and lumbermen's socks, 
were not stared at ; that was mine. A gentleman- 
clerk inquired after our trip, a gentleman-bell-boy 
took our knapsacks. With the courtesy of an ac- 
ceptance he refused a tip. From this marvel be- 
gan my study of the Club. I am still studying it. 

By bedtime that night Lynn and I had reached 
an acute stage of curiosity as to the genesis of an 
institution that performed so many unusual serv- 
ices for its members with such an engaging effi- 
ciency. The destiny of any enterprise depends on 
its objective, its dream, and that upon its dreamer. 
We longed to meet the person or group of persons 
who had dreamed this bold and embracing enter- 
prise into being. 

Many a time since that autumn evening has the 
Club been my home. Each time I have seen its 
significance enlarged, another of its possibilities 
brought to light. And now despite the dangers 
of cold type, — false emphasis, chiefly, — the charm 
and value of the Club are riding me into print. 



240 THE ADIRONDACKS 

If I needed excuse it would be that no summary 
of the features of the Adirondack Park would be 
complete without mention of this, its most orig- 
inal association. And if I am charged with en- 
thusiasm I can but say that no honest mention 
could ever be perfunctory. 

The Lake Placid Club was sired by a sneeze. 
For, though at the age of forty-five Melvil Dewey 
had planted and seen sprout the seeds of more 
original and useful enterprises than most Ameri- 
cans achieve at ninety, he couldn't resist the 
spasms of hay-fever. He had started, in 1876, the 
American Library Association, the American Li- 
brary Bureau, the Library Journal, the American 
Metric Bureau, and the Spelling Reform Associa- 
tion. I have forgotten what his business was. 
Also he had married a woman who had a penchant 
for starting things too. She started the Ameri- 
can Home Economics Association. But she had 
rose-cold and she couldn't stop that. Thus be- 
tween sneezes and snuffles this efficient couple lost 
about four months a year. A birth of a son who 
might have both diseases determined them. They 
decided to start something in the Adirondacks. 

The Adirondacks has always been a good place 
for dreams. Old Mountain Phelps had one. He 
sat on a log and indulged it. If Charles Dudley 
Warner had not nosed it out, the world w^ould 
have been little the wiser. Paul Smith had one. 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 241 

Even with his parents upon his back, he never 
lost sight of it. He died rich and respected. Dr. 
Trudeau had one, a tremendous one. He helped 
the ailing and the unaided to health, himself 
neither rich nor in health. And Melvil Dewey 
has one: perhaps it is the biggest of all. 

Now the way of the dreamer is hard. For it is 
extremely easy to enfog your whole system with 
the beauty of your dream, vaguely hoping that it 
may sometime crystallize about your person. 
That is the way of the amateur dreamer. But 
the professional's way is different. He begins 
with some nucleus of fact, some practical act at 
hand, and wraps his dream about that, irresistibly, 
no matter how small the progress, how tedious the 
process. By this time the Deweys were no longer 
amateurs at dreams. 

Their nuclear idea was to set up a sort of uni- 
versity club in the wilderness where men from the 
colleges might assemble in summer, sneezelessly, 
and yet undivorced from the agreeable. It was 
planned for men whose incomes were not too great 
a match for their intelligences. The meals cost 
a dollar a day. During the first summer thirty 
ate them. 

They ate them in the Adirondacks only after the 
entire continent that flies the Stars and Stripes 
had been searched for a better spot. Maine, Flor- 
ida, Alaska, California, Wisconsin, Vermont, 



242 THE ADIRONDACKS 

MicMgan, New Hampshire, North Carolina — all 
had been discarded for some place in the Adiron- 
dacks, and after three more years of inquiry that 
place had not been located. But Melvil Dewey, 
once snatched from earth by an idea, was past re- 
capture. He continued hunting. 

At last he consulted Paul (who was Apollos) 
Smith, the sage and father of the Adirondacks, 
sitting, aged and bent at the top of his stairway. 
At first the old guide would not admit that there 
existed finer sites than his St. Eegis lakes and 
lands. But being pressed, he said finally, 

"Well, Dewey, everybody knows there ain't a 
finer place in the hull woods than Placid, but after 
that you 've got to come here." 

Upon those words, as in novels, the sneezer 
and wife took guide and canoe, went through the 
seven carries, climbed into their buckboard, drove 
twenty-odd miles through arching wood, and when 
they stood on that little hill by Mirror Lake and 
looked over the rolling valley to its enclosing 
ranges, they knew that their New "World had been 
discovered. At that time there were few houses 
at Lake Placid. But in them dwelt the crafty. 
They demanded a thousand dollars an acre for the 
best of their land. 

In those days, 1890, any amount of land could 
have been bought for $500, $200, $50, $10 an acre, 
and the Deweys spent more summers roaming 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE MS 

about in the hopes of making a lucky strike, but 
always they returned to Placid. The crafty ones 
had raised their views on the value of their soil 
to $2500 an acre. It speaks well for the texture 
of the dream that only the best was good enough. 
Mr. Dewey got a better price at wholesale, and 
took 250 quarter-acres. At last the dream was 
housed. 

For the next twenty years the solidifying of 
shadows, the expansion on new planes took place. 
It was not without compromises, defeats, labor, 
that complete disaster was staved off. There was 
much ebb and flow of check-book, much silent sac- 
rifice, much hope. 

During the second summer the wilderness uni- 
versity club was visited by eighty guests, while 
last August there were eleven hundred guests at 
once, not counting the seven hundred employees, 
and many others disappointed for lack of room. 
Numbers, of course, mean little. Eleven hundred 
guests at Coney Island, for example, would not 
excite comment other than profane. But eleven 
hundred at a club that is still very much in the 
woods, every one of them vouched for by a mem- 
ber or his friend, and no one of whom but is in 
sympathy with the lines of club development im- 
posed by an energetic and elevating dream — 
eleven hundred guests of this kind is a triumph- 
in-sort. 



244) THE ADIRONDACKS 

I believe the clue to Mr. Dewey's dream can be 
found in something that underlay his previous 
endeavors. His names for his library associa- 
tion, his library bureau, his metric bureau, and 
all the rest were prefaced by the word American. 
It cannot have been by chance. He knew that the 
men and women who live under the flag can never 
be either satisfied with life or be true Americans 
unless they live somewhat in accord with the eter- 
nal verities, for of such was the beginning of our 
nation. It was belief in the eternal verities that 
gave America her reason for being. She feared 
God ; she was brave ; she did not disdain to labor ; 
she was frugal; she admired cleanness, honesty, 
high-thinking. 

What began as the Placid Club was, therefore, 
more than a refuge for hay-fever victims, more 
than an eating-resort for indigent intellectuals. 
It gave men breathing time in surroundings of 
haunting loveliness. It gave them a chance to 
cleanse themselves, to see things squarely, to come 
into high thoughts. And almost the only essential 
for membership was character. No matter how 
prominent or able or wealthy a man or a woman 
might be, if she or h6 had not that passport to 
good society, which is easier to recognize than to 
define, that person was asked to seek elsewhere 
more congenial atmospheres. And every season 
some such persons, who cannot grow accustomed 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 247 

to life without a bar, or who mistake the spirit of 
the Club in other ways, receive such a request. 
The result is that the atmosphere is kept so un- 
hotel-like that parents who would not leave a child 
alone in a hotel for a single night have often trav- 
eled abroad, leaving their young daughters at the 
Club for all summer in entire confidence that no 
unhomelike taint will touch them. 

No person can be entertained at the Club with- 
out an introduction or invitation from a member. 
In a private card catalogue under constant re- 
vision every guest is rated on his merits and 
marked by letters. If he belongs to class C, he is 
a common client, welcome, neither specially ad- 
vantageous to his fellow clubmen nor at all dis- 
advantageous. If he belongs to class B (better), 
he has some talent, some distinguishing traits that 
make him desirable. He is sought for member- 
ship. Class A includes those who are admirably 
suited to further the ideals of the club. They are 
given every inducement to join. Class D, on the 
other hand, contains the doubtful or deficient 
characters, who, if not positively discouraged from 
joining, are not invited till a further insight into 
their personalities has been obtained. Class E is 
made up of unsuitables who, if already in, must be 
eliminated; if still out, must be excluded for the 
protection of the rest. It is a pretty game. 
Thanks to the closeness of the unguessed scrutiny 



248 THE ADIRONDACKS 

and to the superior level of influence demanded, 
the easy charm of the place has not had to wane 
with growing numbers. 

An exceptional membership naturally has de- 
manded exceptional service. And before any 
clerk or bell-boy is engaged, his past is searched 
for any possible reasons why he should not be at- 
tached to the force. Engaged, he knows that how- 
ever capable he may be, a cigarette, a glass of 
beer, a deviation into profanity or vulgarity of 
any sort will send him job-hunting. In this broad 
country there are men eager for the opportunity 
to live and work under the best imaginable influ- 
ences, and the intelligent gladly deprive them- 
selves of cigars and profanity to their profit. 
They also abjure tips, but as many guests leave 
or send back parting gifts they lose nothing but 
the humiliation. Besides being better paid than 
hotel servants in like capacities, they have better 
meals, better living-rooms, recreation centers, an 
occasional motor or launch. A $20,000 staff house 
is to be built for them. And members continually 
say that they feel more comfortable knowing that 
those who minister are well cared for. 

The Club 's first distinction is character ; its sec- 
ond is excellence of equipment. In many depart- 
ments this nears perfection. Again the essentials 
have been demanded. Since neither display nor 
the nonsense of pretension figures in the expense 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 249 

account, the club is able to focus its brains and 
resources on the items of practical advantage. 
It was supplied with the most invigorating air 
under heaven; it secured a perfect water supply. 
Milk was a more difficult matter. Cornell experts 
found that local sources were all unsound. The 
club bought a cow and lodged her sanitarily. She 
has increased five hundredfold, and the amount of 
cream consumed a month is a matter for comment ; 
no guest is denied any lactic desire. Indeed, the 
cream and milk, the butter and eggs lay the 
foundation for a table that is deliberately the best 
possible within limits. These limits lie well 
within commonsense and yet well beyond reason- 
able desire. The range at any meal must take 
into account the oldish lady who has sat by the 
fire all afternoon and the men who have been 
mountaineering on snow-shoes. And from end to 
end each item must be of the best. I know that 
there is no hope of saying this without its sound- 
ing like an advertisement. Their pastry cooks 
must be exquisite fellows. 

Beds, the management claimed, were of the ut- 
most importance, and all the money should go into 
springs and mattresses and blankets and none 
whatever into carvings and guardian angels. The 
tired ski-er sleeps delightfully. Beds make an 
excellent hobby for club-makers. And in the in- 
firmary one can lie all day in the last luxuries of 



250 THE ADIRONDACKS 

healing if tobogganing has disabled or the intoxi- 
cation of flexible flying been overdone. 

Another extravagance is the system of fire pro- 
tection ; $50,000 has been spent to perfect a system 
that in times of greatest drought or in the wildest 
blizzard could deluge the first flames with 2500 
gallons a minute from its system of hydrants. A 
night and day patrol is so arranged that a fire 
could never get a running start; the great fire- 
pump is kept under constant pressure; Mirror 
Lake is the supply. Fires do occur. In twenty- 
three years forty-two have broken out. But the 
system has kept the total loss under $500. Angry 
flames, indeed! 

And now of the greatest extravagance of all. 
One day Dr. Albert Shaw of the ''Review of Re- 
views ' ' asked if he might sink a couple of tomato 
cans in the garden turf to knock a white ball into. 
In such a manner the game of ten centuries' 
growth began at Lake Placid. The Club has sunk 
$200,000 in their turf. Four hundred players 
have done themselves tan on the courses in one 
day. And the difficulties begin with the choice of 
your course; there are four now, three nine-hole 
courses and one of eighteen holes, of 6300 yards, 
and two more eighteen holers of 6000 yards are al- 
ready well under way. The Club dooryard is ten 
miles long and there is always room. Nowhere 
in the world in such a setting of great woodlands, 



AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 251 

shapely peaks, and passes can men follow the ball 
over courses more interestingly diversified, more 
scientifically planned. Even Lynn, whose title for 
the game is ''fugitive idiocy,'^ was soothed into 
something very like admiration for the technical 
as well as the natural beauties as explained to us 
by the creator, Mr. Dunn. 

And if this prospect does not hold you spell- 
bound, I, who talk as if the Club were the result 
of mine own vigil, — I will offer you others. There 
are forty courts for tennis and other outdoor 
games, and there is fishing away, and boating at 
home, and water-sporting, and riding and driving, 
and camping by still waters, and music and 
pageants, and four outdoor theaters, and climbs, 
and the four million acred Park in which to play 
in company with the most charming people of the 
land. And it is this last that brings me back from 
the outlay of dollars to the dream. 

How is it, one may reverently inquire, that 
granted a perfect setting, a perfected apparatus 
of enjoyment, an atmosphere of commonsense, 
warmed with culture and kept in motion by great 
wealth, — how is it that the Lake Placid Club can 
prevent itself from gradually being enwrapped 
in a cocoon of complacency, refinement, sport, and 
soullessness ? This conundrum presented itself 
to us on the second day. A sample bill had been 
sent around to our room, as is the custom, so that 



255 THK ADIROXDACKS 

if tliero avo any momoiits of harsh surprise thoy 
may c'oino at the beiriiiiniii: ot" one's sojourn ami 
not at the end. .1 believe I liad reniarl^ed that tlie 
phioe was extraordinary. 

'• Extraordinary I" said Iatui. -'Well, and well 
it might be. For every day that you and l.uggins 
and 1 pay our bill we might have a fortnight in 
the woods. It *s easy wallow for the rieh. but 
some paee for the professor. You saiil that it was 
founded for the eh\ssios who 'd taken the eount, 
didn't your' 

On the following day. I replied: 

"It is.'' I had sought, met. and been eonqnered 
by the idealist in the room where he puts his ideals 
to hard labor. It is a room piled quite high with 
the paraphernalia of otVices and doesn't look at 
all like a den of visions. It is a very praetieal 
idealery. And its master is big, well-set, bushy- 
browed, peering, quick; the garment of his being 
is that of a purposeful business man. Only when 
stripped for confidences do you sense tlie aggres- 
sive prophet. 

I am glad that I came upon the Club in its suc- 
cess, for the season of strenuous waiting is at an 
end. At the other end, a quarter of a century 
back, it would have been too easy to have said 
with the great majority, '*It is a pretty dream, but 
it will not work." 



AN EXI'KUIMKN'r IN ISTElA.U^ESCi: 9Jjfi 

Tho core of the drfjarn was: "by coopf^ralion to 
Kocun; arrjorj^ corigftnial pf;opl<; and bfrautiful natii- 
ral HurroundirjgH ail th^; advaiitagrjH of an idf;al 
vacation or permanent country home." ""I'hc con- 
genial people were the worn college profeKHorn, 
*'the clasHicH who had taken the count," according 
to the irreverent Lynn. But J had not Heen any 
of thcHG about. KoHy and exuberant rnJllioriaireH 
golfed in droven and hiked long dintancen. i>ut 
an a retreat for the profcKHorial elite whoHC 
thoughtH were longer than their pocket bookn the 
Club waH but raggedly utilized. So little waw I 
ac^juainted with the wayn of the practical vinion- 
ary that 1, too, began to think that it wan ''eany 
wallow" for the rich and rich alone. 

Pearly in the dreanrjicHt Ktage the young Club 
began to lose money. At a critical time one of 
Mr. iJewey'H originations brought him in twenty 
times what the original Club c^jst, and he and his 
wife put that and the rest of their fortune into the 
drearn. Thus do Holy Grailern. 

Ah expannion came more capital wan needed, 
and without abandoning their final object, they 
called in the millionaire, the intellectual rich man, 
to make the others' paradise a possibility. The 
final object was and is a permanent foundation in 
this most lovely of all regions where the promising 
youth of the country may lay hold of in~piration 



254 THE ADIRONDACKS 

and carve it to their uses. The Club is to be, and 
is, the home of inspiration in practice. Tried in- 
tellects will gather on their sabbaticals; assem- 
blies of research will meet ; congresses of moment 
will debate in this most suitable environment. In 
the cool of summer or in the white fire of winter 
the country's best will exchange ideas before the 
open hearth. It would sound too beautiful if the 
foundation had not been laid and hardened to sup- 
port the superstructure these many years. 

See what has been done : Seventy-five hundred 
acres owned in the heart of a great and perpetual 
State park; farms, buildings, camps, sport facili- 
ties developed; a large membership culled from 
two countries, on whom is the impress of the 
Club's essential ideals; a financial incorporation 
now beyond the power of individual whim to 
change; and the creator of all this yet young 
enough to drive on with the unfinished dream. 

Emerson doubtless fed on his own dictum many 
times without divining how nourishing it would 
be to others when he said, *'If a man can make 
a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a 
better mouse-trap than his neighbor, the world 
will make a beaten track to his door." 

This is the motto of the Club. And with its 
glorious text a sermon is being preached, the pur- 
port of which is health, wisdom, and good-fellow- 
ship. 



w 




AN EXPERIMENT IN INTELLIGENCE 257 

October swam over into November while Ljrm 
and I lingered in the lap of bankruptcy at this 
caravansary. And when we pulled Luggins from 
his bed of enervating luxury, we three swore that 
when our chores were done, back we would come 
in time for winter sports. How my hand itches 
to be at the naming of them, if only to carry me 
back to the season when there are no tragic in- 
sects, no weeks of mist, and when the winter woods 
are fair — so fair that I cannot resist the telling, 
the trying to tell, in its own proper place I 



CHAPTER XI 

THB GUNTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 

OUR fortnight in the Placid valley had made 
a change for the grimmer in the mountain 
covering. We had entered it in gold; we were 
leaving it in gray. Probably six weeks would 
pass before the great winter snows would fall. 
Until then the color would die out of everything 
but the evening skies. It was a waiting season 
and we would have liked to have waited with it at 
the Club where a between-seasons idleness encour- 
aged a comradely feeling that the stress of summer 
could not know. But despite our three months' 
wanderings, the Adirondacks proper were still 
before us, still unclimbed. Until we had stood 
on Marcy we knew we should have that uncom- 
pleted feeling for goals unachieved which only 
Luggins did not indulge. 

It was not easy for us to break away. We did 
want to complete the trip under canvas, but high 
winter was no longer an adventure ; it was a cal- 
culation. A sudden drop to anything below zero 
was within the range of past recordings; we had 
to go prepared. We had softened, too, with our 

258 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 259 

hot tubs and sheeted beds and slave-got break- 
fasts. Luggins did not regard it as an act of 
mercy to be filched from his sociable stable to 
gratify the ambitions of two deranged sight-seers. 
The hardest thing was to clap a finis to some in- 
teresting acquaintanceships at the club. "We de- 
termined that only drastic methods would get us 
off at all. So because neither of us fatten on fare- 
wells, we made the excuse of a far journey and 
got away at dawn when most Club members are in 
their Placid beds. 

Two miles from the Club we passed for the last 
time the little farm, high, bleak, whence sprang 
the Civil War. There lies John Brown's body 
a-moldering in the grave. Somehow the valley is 
bigger for the grave. We stopped for a last look. 

Already out of the west low, bellying clouds 
had begun to sow white flakes before a rising wind. 
Between the flurries a pale sunshine chased over 
the valley floor. I have never seen an outlook so 
bare, so reproachful, so indicative of uncondi- 
tional servitude. However mad the fragrant, 
luxurious South may have thought the old abo- 
litionist, if they could have had but one look at 
his pitiful home, they would have been convinced 
of his stem sincerity. 

John Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800. 
Fifty-nine years later he was hanged at Harper's 
Ferry. The story of those years shapes all to the 



260 THE ADIRONDACKS 

one mad end. It is relentless as is a Greek tra- 
gedy. The setting of the story is so bare that it 
seems as if perpetual November is the right at- 
mosphere of plot and character. There are vines 
about the house, but doubtless his wife planted 
those. All souls feel the instinct for beauty. She 
did not understand her husband's. ''He seemed 
to think there was something romantic in that 
kind of scenery, ' ' she told Mr. Wentworth Higgin- 
son. She probably thought it was a very cold 
romance. 

John Brown had so long subjugated his senses, 
his judgment to his plan for freeing the colored 
race that he was affected not at all by comforts or 
discomforts. He was warmed by his idea above 
the rigors of climate. Fed or not, he had traveled 
from neighbor to neighbor to give them the final 
instructions of the raid. For years his living 
idealism had fissured the stony hearts of his more 
prosaic neighbors until they were willing to sup- 
port him and his sons in any venture. While 
dreaming in the sight of his beautiful mountains, it 
was possible to believe that impossible salvations 
would come true. But even for him there must 
have been moments of doubt. When you see the 
unpainted barn, when you realize the winter hard- 
ships, you can appreciate the high purpose that 
nursed a great scheme in a country where to sup- 
port life itself is hard enough. It is the evidence 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 261 

of his homely struggle and not the simple carving 
on the great gray bonlder that is so poignant to 
me. The tragedy is not that he was executed, not 
even that he should have led his sons to an unuse- 
ful death. The tragedy is that after a lifetime of 
solitary planning he should have died believing 
that his lifetime's dream had totally miscarried. 

The snow flurries increased in violence, and we 
were glad to leave the barren grave and descend to 
the river which we crossed despite the incredulity 
of Luggins. A path led through the woods and 
out upon the road to Heart Pond. On the road 
we were hustled manfully in the rear by the wind. 
The weather was turning colder. When we came 
out upon the lake, its glare of ice looked as lonely 
and remote as Baffin Bay. 

It is easy to believe that Heart Pond before the 
forest fire was the supreme gem of the wilderness. 
The water is said to be incredibly clear. The 
slopes of the great mountains rise on all sides. 
Only an unmarred forest is wanting to complete 
the picture of sheltered loveliness. Even on the 
blustery day that blew us thither the roar of the 
gusts on the distant slopes sounded as through a 
spell, and the sun between whiles shone serenely 
on us protected by a shoulder to the north called 
Mount Jo. 

The great fire was in 1903, so that the new trees 
have already half their growth. The Club had 



262 THE ADIRONDACKS 

bought the land just three years before because 
it had been pronounced by experts the very finest 
square mile of woods in all the Forest Preserve's 
four million acres. There had been an old hunt- 
er's inn there which was destroyed, but the fire 
was extinguished before the trails or the big 
mountain flanks had been ruined. In a few more 
years the Club will rebuild the headquarters, 
constructing a log house in the good taste that 
makes the hotels of our Western parks an addition 
to the view instead of necessary eyesores. Now, 
there are sheds and two or three camps for the 
small parties which drive out from the Club every 
day in summer. 

The Adirondack Lodge used to be the best start- 
ing place for several climbs, all very interest- 
ing. And it will be a mountain focus again. 
More shelters will be built along the trails. Pro- 
tection by fire-wardens, ownership by clubs, and 
an increasing public interest in conservation will 
preserve the wildness and beauty of this block of 
a hundred square miles in all its grandeur. For 
charm of situation it has very few equals. For 
accessibility to the great summits none. From the 
site of Adirondack Lodge there are trails up the 
mountains which you climb in from two to seven 
hours. But ambition rests there. This section 
can never be used for promiscuous picnicking. So 
here we have the desideratum of all lovers of the 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 263 

wild: a region of rugged, forested, well-watered 
beauty, protected by club and State and nature 
from vandalism forever, so extensive that no one 
can know it thoroughly, so forbidding that only 
the accomplished can know parts of it inti- 
mately. And for eight months of the year only 
the most courageous (or foolhardy) will seek to 
know it at all. 

Heart Pond, formerly known as Clear Pond, 
fulfilled our most exacting tastes, and we set about 
settling for an indefinite stay. There is some- 
thing heart-lifting in such a decision. Coziness 
appeases the cat in us, just as good meals from a 
stationary stove appease the wolf. I don't know 
how many other animals there are inside me. But 
I suspect Lynn and I represent a fairly varied 
menagerie at times. And Luggins can be such an 
ass! His judgment, for example, about the 
amount of fire-wood that ought to be hauled in 
for a winter's evening is notoriously untrustwor- 
thy. If Lynn chops it down and I chop it up, Lug- 
gins' share of work obviously is to haul it in to 
camp. But it has taken a lot of expostulation to 
convince him of the ignominy of slacking. Some 
day I hope that they will breed horses with pro- 
bosces so that, like an elephant moving teak, the 
camp broncho can assume all responsibility for 
bringing in the logs. 

It was going to be a cold night. Heart Lake is 



264 THE ADIRONDACKS 

about 2200 feet above sea level, and the mercury- 
was about that much below freezing. And we had 
no one to share the cold with. We could keep it 
all for ourselves. Of the hundred millions resid- 
ing in the United States 999,998 souls were shovel- 
ing coal into their furnaces on that boisterous eve- 
ning while we were camping out a hundred miles 
from congested cities, from furnaces, and from 
coal. 

But the ingenuity of young America has not 
yet been stifled by enervating luxury. We had 
found a shack with a stove in it. The shack was 
made of boards and designed for comfort in a 
Texas summer. The boards kept out the larger 
masses of air that beat upon the house, but the 
cracks, which made the wall look very much like 
a paling fence laid on its side, let in narrow strips 
of cold. The result gave you the effect of sitting 
in forty draughts at once. Lynn said that he 
didn't like his cold striped. 

Then he made his suggestion. We had stretched 
the tent and the floor cloth on the north and west 
sides of the shack, but hadn't clothes enough to 
dress up the rest of the building. So we had the 
simple inspiration of putting up the tent inside the 
shack. By pitching the baker in front of the stove 
we were soon as comfortable as on a June evening 
when spring is a little late. 

It is a matter for philosophy how great an en- 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 267 

thusiasm a little inspiration kindleth. Sometimes 
the inspiration is a cup of coffee before you set up 
camp ; sometimes it 's a hot stone at your foot at 2 
A.M. It almost always is some tiny detail that 
changes the world for you in a manner that would 
be touching if it weren't childish. We had been 
confronted by an Arctic night in a desert waste. 
We shift a bit of waterproofing. Now we listen 
to the blasts howling over a magnificent moun- 
tain world, happy in their howling. ''What fools 
these mortals be!" is a charitable way of putting 
it. 

We were happy. Luggins was inactive and sat- 
isfied. Lynn and I had a great store of wood, a 
luxury of appetite, and much food. We were 
about to explore as gratifying a wilderness of 
peaks, passes, and cascades as our sunlunary 
sphere can furnish. We dreamed off soon, to 
the accompaniment of the gale which roared as 
does the sea at some great cliff. At drowsy in- 
tervals during the night I was aware of it surging 
up to assail the shack with weight. 

We woke to find the weather still playing in 
the same key. The squalls had deposited an inch 
or two of snow-dust, and there were alternations 
of sky curtain and deep blues. A big mountain 
was out of the question, and we wanted to re- 
serve the pass. So we climbed Mount Jo. It 
rises only a few hundred feet above the pond, but 



268 THE ADIRONDACKS 

steeply, making a north wall to the lake, and from 
a bared rock it gives a view of the soaring slopes 
of Mclntyre. Golden, Marcy, and the rest shone 
out distantly between squalls though their ex- 
treme tops were never visible. 

That afternoon the wind dropped, followed by 
the temperature. At the pink of the next morn- 
ing it registered 4° above zero. But for chopping, 
flannel shirts open at the neck were an inconven- 
ience. The air affected one like prosperity. Just 
walking was not good enough. One felt like skip- 
ping up Mclntyre before breakfast and running 
over to Marcy on the way home. Plain earth was 
superfluous support. Bodies were an incum- 
brance. 

We set out, the three of us, for the great ad- 
venture of our trip, the crossing of Indian Pass. 
Advice to us had been divided. Many, while not 
exactly saying '* Fools I" to our faces, had hinted 
as much when we suggested taking Luggins along. 
On the other hand a member of the Commission 
himself had told us that it was possible, though 
requiring care. 

In the sun the light covering of snow was melt- 
ing, and our progress was not rapid. We ignored 
the beckoning of the Iroquois Ravine, which leads 
you up into the recesses of Mclntyre. I can rec- 
ommend the place to any hermit who is particu- 
larly greedy for solitude. Farther on, a trail 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 269 

into a pond, Scott's, cuts off to the southwest on 
the right. The scramble began shortly after that. 

We did not get Luggins over. The member of 
the Commission was right, however. It can be 
done with a horse without unnecessary danger. 
But there were three reasons why it seemed un- 
wise to us. The days were almost at their short- 
est, and we risked having night for the other end. 
The snow, while only two or three inches deep 
below, was fully half a foot at the beginning of 
the real climb and promised to be an actual hin- 
drance above, where a misplaced foot on the part 
of our carry-all might deprive us of his society in 
its most useful form. An inch of reason is worth 
a mile of regret was Lynn's happy paraphrase of 
Luggins 's own opinion about proceeding. So we 
recavalcaded along the trail to spend another night 
in the heat-proof shanty. 

The next morning was just as cold, just as clear, 
and we set out before the sun, leaving Luggins 
smiling at the thought of peace. Before noon we 
were eating lunch, delicious as well-earned, at the 
Summit Rock of the Indian Pass. Some day when 
the Hudson valley is one continuous city and all 
the rest of the State is suburbs, they will block up 
the ends of Indian Pass and use it for cold storage. 
We ate there not to create a record in chills, but 
because we were famished and the view was fine. 
But a fire and hot tea and hot beans and hot mush 



270 THE ADIRONDACKS 

with sugar and heated milk were of little avail 
against the searching tooth of that type of cold. 
The enormous cliff and the shadowy chasm and 
we were all cold and wild together. Whatever the 
sun may accomplish in midsummer, I can assure 
any one that its effort in late November is a total 
loss. If anybody chooses to tell me that the snow 
doesn't melt there all the year round or that 
ice is found in the caves on the Fourth of July or 
any of the other tales that accumulate about a 
superior sort of desolation like the Indian Pass 
I shall believe him. 

The Indians had nerve. The pass on a dark day 
must be overpowering. The cliff, Wall-Face, goes 
straight up in the air for exactly a quarter of a 
mile. Opposite, Mclntyre goes a lot higher though 
not quite as straight up. You walk between them 
hoping that the rocks which fall now and then, a 
ton or so at a time, will bound over you. The 
ravine is choked with them. You can't see the 
water at the bottom which works its way around 
the boulders. But you can hear it, they say. We 
didn't! When we stopped to listen our teeth 
chattered. But local history tells of nobody being 
killed by these falling rocks. Even on the other 
trail where an avalanche fills up a lake every so 
often, nobody has been killed. Perhaps it is a 
safety like that of the burro trail down into the 
Grand Canyon. Nature may disdain the obvious. 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 271 

The Indians had nerve, certainly. How did they 
know that their enemies weren't waiting on the 
ledges to sprawl landslides on them? How could 
they be sure that this dark lane was not a lure 
of the Stonish Giants ! To an Indian everything 
was spiritual or devilish. And I should judge that 
from appearances the Pass was mainly devilish. 
It would be in a thunder-storm beyond uncertainty. 

It is quite beyond my efforts to describe the im- 
pressiveness of this gorge on a serene day in au- 
tumn. To have to reproduce a thunder-storm 
would be a predicament, indeed. The Iroquois 
called the trail ''Path of the Thunderer." They 
had courage to follow it. The general locality was 
known to them as "Place Where the Storm Clouds 
Meet in Battle with the Great Serpent. ' ' One can 
safely imagine the affair from a distance : the black 
battlements of rock, the strip of livid sky, the Adi- 
rondack lightnings, the crash of cliffs and thunder 
about your head, the falling rain and trees. It 
would be a noble death. 

Lynn and I did not stop to do the dishes, not 
even the mush pot. For a brief moment the sun 
had stolen around some corner and had lit up the 
forest. Before us a million trees merged in a 
rolling and conglomerate woodland. Behind us 
was the darkest and narrowest of the Pass. 

Of course we had our eyes open for the twin 
streams whose sources are virtually one, whose 



272 THE ADIRONDACKS 

endings are as far apart as '*No" and **Yes.'* I 
wish that we had seen them, for the effect on writ- 
ers is always lyrical. It makes them unable to 
say that one stream runs out into the Hudson and 
that the other gets to the St. Lawrence. It makes 
them phrase it something like this: *'Born in a 
twin cradle, and flowing side by side for a brief 
span they soon part forever, one running to min- 
gle its crystal waters with the waves that wash 
the shores of beautiful Block Island, the other 
pursuing its boisterous way until it is lost in the 
salt floods that beat upon the ice-bound coasts of 
Labrador." 

That is a way streams have. I don't know on 
how many great divides you can find springs flow- 
ing into half a dozen oceans at once. In Yellow- 
stone Park there is one ; in Glacier Park another ; 
Colorado has two or three. I am glad that the 
Adirondack Park is not behind them even in this 
particular. 

From Wall-Face the path descends for a couple 
of hours without any misleading trails until you 
get to Lake Henderson. We went carefully at first 
to avoid any pitfalls, but that danger almost dis- 
appeared at a lower altitude, and we ran. I be- 
lieve that running down a mountain is the most 
common and least defensible crime committed in 
the woods. Take a beech slope slippery with 
leaves and full of little trees to brake you as you 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 273 

pass, or take a mountain with six feet of hardened 
snow, or even take a mountain brook with pitfalls 
at every leap : there is no wisdom short of an old 
guide's that will out-argue the fun. And you 
never get hurt. With a fracture certain at every 
third step you never twist your ankle. You are 
keyed to instant response. You soar over sticks ; 
you escape the hole while your foot is pointing into 
it. And if you misjudge some pile of leaves you 
skip disaster by omitting a step or two and flying 
through the air instead. The only danger is mod- 
eration. You can get down the tallest mountain 
in the shortest time by imitating the way the 
water comes down at Lodore. And only he who 
hesitates breaks a leg. For sheer exhilaration 
and variety of risk there is no amusement so heart- 
ily to be criticized, so whole-heartedly to be recom- 
mended. 

Lake Henderson is one of the monuments to an 
iron merchant ; Mt. Henderson is another ; the Iron 
Works is another ; his marble shaft is another. It 
is a sad story, but I shall weep for him on another 
page, merely saying in passing that it is a rare 
foundry manager who can have half a landscape 
named after him. 

Adirondack is the site of the dead iron industry 
which is about to be revived in this section. It is 
also the headquarters of one of the most impor- 
tant of the Adirondack clubs, the Tahawus, a con- 



274 THE ADIRONDACKS 

tinuation of the Adirondack Club. This associa- 
tion, assuming charge of some of the most impor- 
tant forested land in the Adirondacks, owning, in- 
deed, most of Marcy and Mclntyre and Golden 
and half a dozen lakes, several sources of the Hud- 
son and one of the Raquette River, has made 
good its ownership. Everything is preserved as 
the Commission would have it. Travelers like 
ourselves are housed for the night when there is 
room. I should imagine, however, it were better 
to be prepared to hear that there is no room. I 
cannot imagine a club member being able to get 
there and not getting. 

In the moonlight we went out on Lake Hender- 
son. The ice was thick enough to harvest. In 
the dim light Mclntyre and Wall-Face and that 
eerie Path of the Thunderer through which we 
had come appeared legendary and indistinct. 
There were no storms now battling with the ser- 
pent. The serpent was dormant. But his atmos- 
phere persisted. I insist on the bravery of those 
Indians. 

I find that I have not given the moon her due. 
Lynn and I spent six moons in the woods and were 
grateful to each of them. In the city sky a moon is 
a graceful ornament very much like a coat of arms. 
You may notice it while stepping from your hotel 
to your taxi, unless you are blinded by the elec- 
tric lights. But in the woods it is searchlight, 



I 



i 




THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 277 

weather prophet, and society. In the summer it 
plays enchantment on lovely landscapes. In the 
winter it livens the inhabitants with its shine. 
The north star is a surer friend, but for a luxury 
that fades to come again, let me commend the 
wilderness moon. 

We did not feel that we should take time to 
visit the Preston Ponds whence the Cold River 
rises, or go down to Tahawus and out into the 
Schroon Lake country, or to the Opalescent River 
which is a name coined out of Heaven, or to the 
little pond. Tear of the Clouds, the highest source 
of the Hudson, for Luggins was in the shack 
alone. Unfortunately Luggins is not a philoso- 
pher unless you put him among the Epicureans. 
His thoughts are not the long, long ones of youth, 
but the short and distracted ones of a gourmand 
uncertain about his next meal. Therefore we de- 
cided that our duty focussed upon the north shore 
of Heart Pond. We decided, however, to take the 
new and easier and longer way back by Avalanche 
Lake. 

The clear weather was holding. It was an easy 
walk up to the Henderson Monument near Calam- 
ity Pond, also dedicated to the memory of the 
ironmonger. The stone is beautiful The in- 
scription reads: 

** Erected by filial affection to the memory of our 
dear father, David Henderson, who accidentally 



278 THE ADIRONDACKS 

lost his life on this spot by the premature dis- 
charge of a pistol, 3rd Sept., 1845." 

We forgot the calamity in the ascent, and, when 
that ended, in Lake Golden. We longed to follow 
its outlet down to the famous ** Flume of the Opal- 
escent." The Hanging-Spear Falls must be fine 
enough, and the contour of the survey map makes 
for splendid water-rushes. When you take into 
account the reputed amounts of opalescent feld- 
spar which give the stream in sunlight its sparkle 
and its name the sight must be worth many dead 
horses. But Luggins was a friend. 

By this time, anyway, we were so impressed 
by this country that we had been planning a next 
summer's return, which made it easier to forego 
the Opalescent. Although the two lakes, Golden 
and Avalanche, lie in a pass, they get some sun, 
and we had lunch under different conditions from 
those of the day before. '*A geologist would 
probably settle here for good," I wrote in my note- 
book, ''because nothing is where it is meant to be, 
and that makes a geologist happy. ' ' Or any kind 
of a scientist, I might add. Give a scientist some- 
thing to explain, and he is content. Unfortunately 
neither Lynn nor I knew anything more about the 
earth than that it is an oblate spheroid (remem- 
bered from youth), so we were unable to appreci- 
ate the flinty hypersthenes and trap dikes of 
Mount Golden. But we could ignorantly admire 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 279 

the size of the avalanches that have raced down the 
sides of that unsettled mountain. One of them 
filled up the lake in the middle, and they call the 
other half Avalanche Lake now. The Indians 
called Golden Ournawarla, which means Scalped. 
We walked down the middle of the lake. I sup- 
pose there must be a trail beside it in summer. 
There didn't appear to be much room for one. 

It was still early afternoon when we had finished 
the five miles from Avalanche to Heart. But we 
were ready to stop. The round trip is nearly 
thirty miles, and we had done some other walking 
too. The light snow had required caution. So 
there was considerable mutual joy in the ven- 
tilated shack. A pony does n't jump up into your 
lap and lick your face; he doesn't even arch his 
back and purr; but as Lynn put it, ''the little old 
cow can get pretty doggone glad to see you, and 
it isn't all meal-ticket gladness either." 

With the next dawning came signs that the cold 
and clear wave was about done. The sky was 
still cloudless, but the north wind was hushed at 
last ; it was a magnificent day for either Marcy or 
Mclntyre, which latter we chose. 

On an energetic day Mclntyre can be ascended in 
less than two hours from Heart Pond. We would 
have done better than two if at the top there had 
been no snow. But above a certain zone it speed- 
ily deepened. Even the trees were slippery with 



280 THE ADIRONDACKS 

frost. At the steepest it was rather fun hauling 
yourself up from trunk to trunk in a shower of 
snow-flour. But it was hard keeping the trail. 
At the Club we had jotted down instructions and, 
in winter, contours are easier to follow, but time 
after time we had to look for blazes when we 
could discover no signs of cleared way. The falls 
were silent, owing to the dry autumn and the 
frost. Mclntyre is 5112 feet high, second only 
to Tahawus's 5344. But such is the pressure of a 
superlative that ten people struggle up Marcy to 
every one that tops Mclntyre. In my humble 
opinion Marcy comes about fifth in desirability. 
From Marcy you have a view of a stupendous 
jumble. It is like being on top of the biggest bub- 
ble in a boiling cauldron. While from White- 
face, from the Giant, and in most directions from 
Mclntyre you have the world laid before you, an 
out-soaring panorama. From Mclntyre on a day 
such as ours they tell me you can count one hun- 
dred and thirty-five lakes. 

We had no desire to count. The scene was 
lovely beyond enumeration. People vary as much 
at a mile up as they do at sea-level. Some like to 
sit in a stupor of beatification, some like to get 
out the map to verify God's handiwork. It will 
be the same way in Heaven: the sheep will be 
dazzled by the Throne, while the goats are count- 
ing the candlesticks to see if they are seven. I 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH. STONE 281 

am glad, personally, for the variety. And par- 
ticularly if you are one of the easily beatified kind, 
it is a matter of convenience to include a map- 
worshiper in the party. 

There were certain features that began to in- 
trude upon our receptivities after the first ten 
minutes of vague delight. Tahawus, of course, 
butted one in the eye, and Golden and the spot of 
water into which it shakes stones from time to 
time. Far oif to the southwest we saw a strip of 
silver we guessed was Long Lake. To the north 
Whiteface had a hoary crown and we could see 
part of Saranac. Seward rose in dignity to the 
west, but the thing that caught our eyes was the 
Wall-Face precipice, not nearly so imposing, how- 
ever, as from underneath. Indian Lake and a 
country of rolled green that lifted into edges of 
blue ran to the southward, and above the line of 
blue a line of summery looking clouds lay wait- 
ing. Overhead filmy mare 's-tails drew curved de- 
signs across the blue. They promised insurrec- 
tion on the morrow, but the present was divinely 
fair. We sat warm as in summer on the sum- 
mit rock. The thin snow covering radiated back 
the sun and tanned us like an August sea-shore. 
Yet while we were making lunch the haze grew 
thicker on the distant mountains. Finally they 
withdrew. That night we heard rain falling on 
our shack. 



282 THE ADIRONDACKS 

The first thought instigated by the more en- 
chanting places in the Park was to settle in each 
one for life. Since that proved inconvenient off- 
hand, the next was to promise ourselves an imme- 
diate return for that purpose. Consequently there 
are at least half a dozen localities where we are 
engaged to spend the rest of our days. Heart 
Pond is one of these. Not right in that shack, 
understand, but at a little distance where angels 
come, but do not trouble the water in order not 
to frighten the trout. 

But we left the next day. Mists fell far down 
the slopes of Mclntyre and even rested on Mount 
Jo. Instead of following the road back to North 
Elba, we noticed a trail that would bring us to the 
neighborhood of the Cascade Lakes. I have 
passed over the ground that we omitted since. 
In a winter blast the open plain is such an exact 
reproduction of a Siberian tundra that experts 
would be confused. There is one point of his- 
torical interest: the expanse of land left by a 
Mr. Gerrit Smith for the benefit of negroes. 
There were one hundred thousand acres of it. Mr. 
Smith presumably had never had a tropical an- 
cestry or he would not have expected the colored 
race to dwell on that plateau. Equatorial blood 
is much too thin for our north intemperate zone 
at its best. But life on that piping plain in a 
nor 'wester would make an Eskimo double his ra- 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 283 

tion of tallow candles. I have seen the snow drive 
across it in the middle of May, the stage horses 
frosting at the mouth and the driver praying to 
St. Nick. Only in July on its waterless expanse 
does the mercury take a consistent interest in the 
upper register. And then the sandy levels make 
a very fair imitation of the Little Sahara. A 
good many families took advantage of Mr. Smith's 
offer. But there was a mix-up in the deed; bad 
law froze out a good many, the weather more, 
until to-day on the entire grant only one colored 
family survives. 

The Cascade Lakes are 2038 feet above sea level 
and lie in another pass, there being just room for 
a stage road between them and Pitchoff Mountain, 
which would be a good name for the road as well. 
For seven months of the twelve there is a contin- 
ual wrangle between the climate and the United 
States over this mail route. Whirlwinds of snow 
drift down from Pitchoff Mountain which topples 
overhead. Then the Government digs itself out. 
And repeat ! The veteran stage driver, who says 
that he hasn't missed a trip for thirty years or 
killed a horse, is another of those sturdy Adiron- 
dackers of the old school, and a man to listen 
to. 

The Cascades used to be called Long Pond and 
later Edmund Pond before the mountain divided 
them, Colden-Avalanche fashion. They are too 



284 THE ADIRONDACKS 

cold and too small to make a very successful resort. 
But for bleak beauty they are to be flattered. 

It is down-hill all the way to the Keene Valley, 
and from the top of the last and steepest hill even 
in lowering weather such as ours the view was 
widespread and soothing after the bleak, burned, 
roadsides of the long way we had come. Before 
us lay the most famous valley in the Adirondacks, 
the first settled, and the most beautiful still. Op- 
posite, Hurricane Mountain rolled up into the 
mist; beneath, farm and woodlot and cottage 
sprinkled the valley floor. In June with a sun 
shining on the quilt of crops and trees, and the 
mountains curving high to the valley's rim there 
is no scene in the whole Park so charmingly com- 
fortable and well set out. The best view of this 
valley, they tell us, is from the top of Hurricane 
— a philosophical climb for the Glenmore scholars. 

Our destination was St. Hubert's in the upper 
valley. So with one admiring look at the huge elm 
opposite the Owl's Head, we ambled on. We 
passed comfortable cottages and broad fields and 
contented-looking people. Always before us the 
mountains closed together, running up into the 
clouds that deepened the impression of seclusion 
and great peace. We did not pause until we 
reached the store and, going through the village 
called Keene Valley, we crossed the Ausable. 
Here fortune took a hand and led us to Mr. Hale 's. 




Keene Valley from Keene Heights 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 287 

We knocked for information as to where to pitch 
our tent. We stayed to converse. And we ended 
by camping on his sleeping porch. It was an ad- 
mirable decision. The northeast storm drizzled 
on for a day or so, and we would have spent the 
time twittering with chill before a bedraggled fire. 
The cold rains of late autumn and the thaws 
of spring are the least desirable of all tenting 
weathers; a downright blizzard is far easier on 
the spirits. As it was, we helped our host poke 
birch-wood in the stove, helped Mrs. Hale out with 
disposing of the best cakes that ever griddled, 
and went to church with both of them. Life was 
a continuous party. Mr. Hale liked to hear of 
Luggins' exploits in the West. And Luggins 
enjoyed Mr. Hale's, — at least the bale of hay. 
It was Whipple and the Kev. Mathias who 
had first climbed along all the ridges, he told 
us. It was Perkins, the artist, who was on one 
of the Ausables with Old Mountain Phelps when he 
saw an unnamed mountain and said it had a 
Gothic look. The Gothics it has been called ever 
since. Old Mountain Phelps 's widow was still liv- 
ing (she has just died). He told us how the otter, 
mink, and fisher must leave for warmer places 
about September 20 for he never saw their sign 
after that. He regaled us with accounts of deer 
hunts and bear hunts and of getting lost on Marcy 
when the night got '* darker 'n a stack of black 



288 THE ADIRONDACKS 

cats." He had often slept out in the woods with 
no blanket when the deer he had killed was too 
far to bring in. He had guided Charles Dudley 
Warner on his last visit. He told us about the 
other guides : how fine a man was George Beede. 
He showed us a verse about him, written by a 
Dr. Gumming in Stoddart's ''Northern Monthly." 

Verde the genial and kindly, 

Verde the knight of the trail 
Wherever you 're camping to-night, Verde, 

Here 's a farewell and a hail. 

In short, LeGrand Hale reviewed the golden age 
of the Adirondacks that has passed for us. Those 
must have been sumptuous days. When finally 
the sun shone on a frosty morning we were armed 
with diagrams and new enthusiasms for the trail. 

Near the Hales, St. Hubert's Inn sits on a knoll 
in the eye of the most beautiful view in our land. 
I am aware of ha\^ng used that superlative before ; 
but this time I mean it. To the east the Giant of 
the Valley rises and rises. Before you Noon 
Mark tells the time. And toward the winter twi- 
light stretches the upper valley, forested with 
splendid trees and flushed with the colors of the 
sunset sky sharp with Sabele and rugged with 
Sawtooth. The view over Raquette from our 
North Bay had given us enchanting bays and 
headlands. The prospect from the Lake Placid 
grounds had shone with Whiteface and the en- 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 289 

circling ranges. This outlook from St. Hubert's 
does more with smaller means. It soothes while 
it uplifts the soul. 

Our three-days' rain had been snow on Marcy, 
and Mr. Hale advised against the ascent. So at 
that time we did not climb the master peak. In 
fact it looked as if a premature winter was settling 
on the region, for on the day before Thanksgiving 
it snowed a foot in the valley. Until that and sub- 
sequent falls should have packed hard, any moun- 
taineering would scarcely be worth the trouble. 
But Thanksgiving day was such a perfect speci- 
men of calm winter that we determined to try 
the Giant. We borrowed some wood-going snow- 
shoes, the round kind, and set the alarm for 
six. 

It was just like Mr. Hale to be up and have eggs 
and coffee ready. Also as we were going out he 
poked two packages at us saying that if we ever 
got to the top, we might like a bite. 

The trail was not hard to follow and at the diffi- 
cult places a man who knew how to blaze (from 
the French, hlesser, to wound) had written the 
way in capitals. Twice we came out on ledges that 
overlooked birthday-cake scenes. The snow was 
very light, but grew deeper and deeper — over two 
feet. I found it easier to wade and pull myself up 
the steepest places by little trees than to struggle 
with my webbed feet. The soldiers have cut a 



290 THE ADIRONDACKS 

broad fire-guard along one section, which is as 
steep as a mansard roof. At length we topped 
the ridge. At once all the southern Adirondacks 
spread out below us. There was a thick grove of 
spruce to be pushed through, and we were at the 
top. The snow had been blown off. The trees 
below had caught it and some were almost buried. 
Frost flowers whitened their trunks. In the 
sun the sparkle was too blinding for eyes. And 
how the wind howled over the ridge ! 

From the Giant, Champlain looks fairly close. 
The view is not so comprehensive as from Mcln- 
tyre — Wolf Jaws and the rest loom too high in the 
perspective. But a man would be greedy to want 
more. And he would be wise to climb out of sea- 
son. There was a thrill in floundering .through 
fairy-land not to be bought for less pains. And 
to slide down the mansard roof was worth all the 
exertion of getting up. Thanks to the lunch, which 
we ate at ten in the morning, our ascent of Giant 
was a huge success. 

Of all the passes in the Adirondacks, Indian and 
Elk, Ausable and Opalescent Head, Avalanche, 
Onaluska, Caribou, Great Elba, and Ampersand 
Valley, the highest of all is Hunter's Pass, be- 
tween Dix and Nipple, which leads you through a 
gloomy and savage country 3247 feet above tide 
level. From it another pair of these contrasted 
streams issues, the Schroon finding its way to the 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 291 

Hudson, the Bouquet into Champlain. This gorge 
is only a couple of hours from St. Hubert's. And 
if you climb Dix, you get the variety of Adiron- 
dack shapes. Marcy is a dome; the Gothics a 
steep wedge tapering to a ridge ; Mclntyre almost 
a precipice on the southeast, and a long gradual 
slope from the northwest ; Whitef ace a peak, steep 
on both sides of the ridge ; Sugarloaf a truncated 
cone, a sort of circular mesa ; Dix itself a cone on 
a big base. 

While you are looking out on the varied scene 
you realize how different are the two sorts of val- 
leys in the Park. The one kind spreads out on 
a flat base with upstanding walls like a fiord as 
at Lower Ausable Lake or Wilmington Notch. 
The other belongs to the more conventional val- 
ley form, broader and with less abrupt sides, as 
the lower valley of the Ausable River and of the 
Raquette. The split of Mt. Golden and the Au- 
sable Chasm is different from either. 

From St. Hubert's Mr. Frank W. Freeborn was 
good enough to climb most of the mountains in 
summer with his watch in hand, and I am taking 
the liberty of appending his times, giving the mini- 
mum in each case. Hopkins Peak, 3175 feet, 2Y2 
hours; Mt. Baxter, 2400 feet, IV^ hours; Noon 
Mark, 3550 feet, 1% hours; Mt. Colvin, 4074 feet, 
2 hours; the Giant, 4622 feet, 2^/2 hours; Mt. 
Marcy, 5344 feet, two days. A very interesting 



292 THE ADIRONDACKS 

account of these ascents by Mr. Freeborn was pub- 
lished in ''Appalachia." 

I have visited the Ausable Ponds in many 
weathers, but the most impressive was the first 
time there with Lynn. Snow flurries were droop- 
ing from the greater summits and sifting into the 
valley. The road led through a wood that was 
perfectly quiet, though on the sides of the moun- 
tains we could hear a gust tearing along from time 
to time. The road curved up through a fine forest 
of maple and birch and all the evergreens. At 
length we caught a glimpse of the white ice plain 
beneath us through the bare trees, and at the same 
time a staggering view of gloomy summits tossing 
the clouds between them. It was unexpectedly 
grand. That is the beautiful difference between 
this Park and Switzerland and British Columbia 
and the Yellowstone. In those classic haunts you 
expect to be swept off your feet at every turn by 
new magnificences, and you are often disappointed. 
In the Adirondacks you look forward to having 
the esthetic sense merely tickled from time to 
time. Consequently when you are confronted by 
savageries of bare rock and dignities of sweeping 
line, you discount nothing; you are hit by their 
full worth. 

The distances of battle-ship gray, the hard blues 
of the cold cliffs, the swirling white of the frozen 
lake made a deep impression on us both. The 



THE GIANTS CLOTHED WITH STONE 29a 

snow had drifted high about the porch. Winter 
was established here beyond uprooting, while 
down home the school-boys were hoping hard for 
their first storm. 

The mountains come down to the water's edge 
so abruptly that in summer the only passage is 
by boat. If you are coming from Marcy, you 
must arrange to have a boat meet you. We were 
safe on the ice. Our trail soon brought us to the 
Upper Ausable Pond, which in summer is a ren- 
dezvous for guides, but which we found as de- 
serted as Eden after the fall. The view from 
this pond is less wild, but perhaps more beautiful 
than from the lower. Choice is a matter of per- 
sonality. As you can have both, why decide? 
As you can settle on neither, don't decide! It 
makes relinquishing them easier. 

The Ponds and the country about them are 
owned and protected by the Adirondack Mountain 
Reserve. This company has undertaken to pre- 
serve the waters and woods of their domain, to 
keep the streams in fish, to protect the game, and 
to render points of interest accessible by roads 
and trails to visitors. As this costs, the company 
charges, but moderately, and one is glad to pay 
for such obvious benefits. Boats on the lake, shel- 
ter overnight, guides for the clim.b, provisions — 
these are the wants which are foreseen. 

The longer you stay at Keene Valley, the more 



294 THE ADIRONDACKS 

you take the mountains for granted, the more are 
you impressed by the less striking beauties. At 
first we almost ignored the Ausable. But its 
speed and persistent beauty, I find, swept a chan- 
nel through my memory until I find it easier to 
recall in detail than the shape of Wolf Jaws. The 
waterfalls, too, are sights you climb to see with 
disdain, if you go at all. You have not heard of 
them and you expect little as the Keene Valley 
men are not great advertisers. But let me tell 
you that one stream on Marcy plunges one thou- 
sand feet into the dark Panther Gorge, that the 
Eainbow Falls spray color on the rocks in the 
early afternoon after its fall of one hundred and 
thirty feet, and that the Eoaring Brook Falls 
comes down three hundred feet, leap by leap in 
the beautiful woods of the Giant. There are 
other cataracts and cascades along this valley and 
there are other beauties of hidden pools, of sud- 
den prospects. The Panorama Bluff above the 
Upper Pond ranges half the great mountains for 
you in a splendid group. And as if these notable 
sights were not enough. Nature has carved one of 
those great stone faces on the cliffs of the Lower 
Pond to watch the lonely defiles through their slow 
change. 







■hoto by Warwick S. Carpenter 



Crown of the Cloud-Cle.vvek 



CHAPTER XII 

A CHAPTER OF ENDS AND ODDS 

OUR leave of absence had now nearly ex- 
pired. So had Luggins. The quantity of 
water that had fallen on his unsheltered hide was 
to him an astonishment and to us an anxiety. The 
exposure at Heart Pond had been bad for him, 
and it was well that our trip was finishing. But 
the thought of finishing hurt. A weight, unob- 
trusive at first, but demanding notice as the calen- 
dar turned the December sheet, settled on Lynn 
and myself. Of course we did not foresee the 
American declaration of war and Lynn's immedi- 
ate enlistment; but we did realize that for six 
months we had followed a trail that we could 
never retrace. Other times, other trips, we told 
each other brusquely, and better ones. But we 
knew that there could never be a better. 

Our intention had been to pursue the Ausable 
to its mouth, ending up with a view of the Chasm 
and then running for the train, eyes closed and 
never a look behind. But as the time to do it 
came, we discovered that both wanted something 
else. The Chasm was just a tourist sight any- 
207 



298 THE ADIRONDACKS 

way, and we had both seen Champlaiji. What we 
both secretly desired was to end up where we had 
begun. So we said good-by to the Hales, passed 
the turn-off to the Giant, keyed Luggins to a pace 
he had not attained for many a day, and set all sail 
for Euba Mills, Schroon River, Schroon Lake, and 
North Creek. 

We were running away from the sight that Bae- 
deker double-stars and pronounces the ''most 
wonderful piece of rock formation to the east of 
the Rockies and should not be omitted by any 
traveler who comes within a reasonable distance 
of it." 

The walled banks of the Ausable were once 
joined. Projections on one side, opposite like 
cavities on the other, prove this. Also the strata 
continue. The river has cut down to the an- 
cient sea deposits, and you can find fossils of 
mussels and even the ripple marks imbedded. 

You start in at the top after admiring the sev- 
enty foot Rainbow Falls, and after you walk about 
half the way, you can get into a boat and shoot 
the rapids. The dip of strata makes the ride even 
more exciting. The cliff rises to one hundred and 
seventy-five feet at one place where the stream 
is sixty feet deep and only twelve wide. The 
names attached to the carvings of the rock tell 
the whole story and sometimes more. They come 
in about this order : 



A CHAPTER OF ENDS AND ODDS 



Rainbow Falls 


Pulpit Rock 


Horseshoe Falls 


Lookout Point 




Boa^i 


Elbow 


Slide 




Pyramid 


Stalactite Cave 


Plume 


Devil's Oven 


Punch Bowl 


Hell Gate 


Jacob's WeU 




Mystic Gorge 


Moses 


Long Gallery 


Shady Gorge 


Point 0' Rocks 




Smugglers Pass 


Hyde's Cave 


Post-Office 


Bixby's Grotto 


Point Surprise 


Easy Chair 


Balcony 


Flat Iron 


Shelf Rock 


Table Rock 


Sentinel 


Cathedral Rocks 


Broken Needle 


Grand Flume 


Pool 


Sentry Box 



Basin 



Not far from the chasm is the little gorge, Poke 
O'Moonshine, a name to lure one from the com- 
forts of the grave. 

But once having turned our faces home we 
stepped not to the right or left nor did we look 
behind. The way was downward for the most 
part, and after the mountains of St. Hubert's we 
had few eyes for the smiling, but uncommanding 
hillocks by the road. That night we pitched late 
and hurriedly beside the Schroon River, and be- 
fore noon the next day had reached its lake. 

The Schroon Lake country is comely, even in 



300 THE ADIRONDACKS 

December, and the lake, which is ten miles long, 
was smiling at us. For a fortnight we had seen 
nothing but ice on Golden, on the Cascades, and 
on the Ausable Ponds, so that the ripple of the 
waters not yet in hiding was a surprise to us. 
But we learned that the altitude was only about 
eight hundred feet. The lake was named after 
Madame de Maintenon, once Scarron. 

Farmlands and woodlands alternated, and 
Marcy was already a shadow on the horizon be- 
hind us. Across the lake the peak of Pharaoh 
Mountain rose, but even if we had then known its 
wide outlook over a ten-leagued forest, I doubt 
if we should have made the wide detour. We 
were going home. 

That night we chose our camp site with all the 
regard due last things. There was a stream 
called Trout Brook on the map, but even that 
magic word in no way betrayed half its loveli- 
ness and loneliness. The gods had sequestered it 
for their own fishing — and had forgotten it. A 
grove of hemlocks had been spared. The brook 
wandered past their roots. Ice had formed in its 
pools, but had not choked its little song, and we 
speculated to each other just how large a fish this 
sunken log harbored, just where we 'd cast next 
spring to entice one from that ledge. 

Before the sun had been drowned in a b; ik of 
ominous cloud in the southwest we had huge piles 



A CHAPTER OF ENDS AND ODDS 301 

of wood for defense. But no air stirred, and 
after supper a little fire, such as we had talked by 
half the summer evenings through, was enough 
for cheer and warmth. 

In the heart of all mankind is the latent desire 
to live as we had been living. Subways, auto- 
mats, elevators are easy, but they cannot quite 
stifle the call of the soil. A thousand years of 
starched collars cannot disestablish the memory 
of the hundred thousand with no collars at all. 
Vacations in the wild must be only vacations be- 
cause civilization must go on. Orchestras would 
vanish and libraries molder back into tribal tra- 
ditions if everybody took to the woods. Yet the 
woods will call us until we cut them all down and 
bury our heads in the sand to forget. 

The talk that night was not of the park or new 
routes or even of Luggins. It resolutely kept off 
past pleasures as too much to bear, plumbing the 
future as best aid to the misery of a parting. It 
was late before we crawled into our blankets, and 
before I slept I heard that faintest sound, the 
scratch of snowflakes on the tent. 

The morning found us in business mood. The 
snow was falling briskly, and there was much to 
be done. Luggins was glad to be moving, and 
we mingled no sentiment with our eggs. In two 
hours we were entering North Creek. 

There was still much to be done: Luggins* 



302 THE ADIRONDACKS 

transportation and a merciful plague of details 
about getting off. Only as we sat in the train 
waiting for it to pull out did the contrast to our 
arrival well up into words. We laughed at our 
sensitiveness to the villagers' stares on that first 
morning when we cavalcaded along the road to 
North River, plodding Lynn, patient Luggins, and 
perspiring I. How we, had flaunted our independ- 
ence incongruously in their faces I Then the but- 
tercups had been bright along the banks, the blue- 
birds very blue upon the wires. 

At last the train chugged out along the plat- 
form. We glanced out of the window. But the 
valley and its mountains were swallowed in the 
gray of the kindly snow. 



CHAPTER Xin 

WINTEE PBEFERRBD 

THOSE who have had their pleasure in calling 
America mercenary should bear in mind that 
it was the Swiss who first extorted dividends from 
winter. But let us not dispute. Now that we 
have discovered that we have a winter climate 
worth coining, let us have every one investing in 
boreal bonds and gilt-edge blizzards. There is no 
better interest offered. And the whole Arctic 
Zone goes security. 

To witness our new-hatched enthusiasm an 
alien innocent might readily suppose that we had 
just invented the cycle of joys called winter 
sports. The truth of it is this, however. Win- 
ter sports began in America when the first dominie 
landed from the Mayflower and the first Pilgrim 
urchin planted a squshy snowball behind his ear. 

From 1609 to 1906 winter sports were still in 
the urchin state. Throughout the Middle States, 
where you can never be sure of your snow, child- 
hood en masse held unofficial prayer-meetings for 
the big storm, and when it came, constructed 
heart-breaking barrel-stave sleds and soap-box 

303 



804 THE ADIRONDACKS 

sleighs. Throughout the north, where you could 
be sure of snow if of nothing else, the urchinry 
took its pleasures unprayerfully and a trifle sadly 
as the season deepened and ravines had to be dug 
to the woodpile. 

During this era of three hundred years the 
adult opinion of snow varied only in intensity. 
There was but one approved place for it and that 
place was particularly inappropriate for snow. 
And can you wonder? In the north for six 
months the stuff fell and accumulated until the 
most ambitious shoveling was necessary if burial 
was to be escaped. While to the southward, snow 
meant discomforts it would chagrin the devil to 
depict. And all this while, shades of Yankee 
thrift! the high costs of snowing kept piling up 
without a cent's worth of return. 

Then somebody went to Norway and discovered 
that the most exquisite sensation could be attained 
by jumping from the height of a third-story win- 
dow, with some boards tied to your feet. Some- 
body else went to Switzerland and discovered 
that the most exhilarating feeling could be got by 
spiraling down a cliff and perspiraling up it again 
for the repeat. Finally, somebody else went to 
Scotland and discovered that the most exciting 
pastime in the (Scotch) world was throwing a 
cobblestone across the ice at somebody else with 
a broom. Thereupon these three discoverers re- 



WINTER PREFERRED 307 

turned and roped off a mountain and charged ad- 
mission to the next snow-storm. Thus began the 
winter sports of commerce in America; where 
they will end no one can hazard information. 
The Lake Placid Club spends about $20,000 a year 
now to enlarge and perfect its equipment. Sara- 
nac Lake and many another spot in the Adiron- 
dacks, the White Mountains, the Green Moun- 
tains, Maine, the West, not to particularize pio- 
neer Canada, are investing solid sums in frost 
and flake. Shrewd capitalists have investigated 
winter and believe she has come to stay. 

There is only one safe investment zone, how- 
ever. It runs from middle Minnesota across 
northern Michigan, dips down into New York 
State, but not down so far as the southern end of 
Lake George, then bends north across upper Ver- 
mont and New Hampshire into Maine. The sub- 
depot of Old Man Winter is Essex County, New 
York, and his capital is the Lake Placid Club. 
The trustees of the capital have spent imperial 
fortunes to habilitate him in a manner worthy of 
a Prince of Hemispheres. And the P. of H. has 
done well by the trustees. 

Winter in Essex County provides sleighing for 
about one hundred and fifty days. To go out day 
after day, relieved from the apprehension of a 
thaw, is an inconceivable sensation to one who has 
not lived in the far north. Winter is a bedraggled 



308 THE ADIRONDACKS 

anxiety to a sports-lover unlucky enough to live 
between the Catskills and Point Discomfort. 
Each alternate snow-storm finishes in rain; furi- 
ous cold is succeeded in a few hours by a warm 
fog; dazzling hopes are routed by drizzling de- 
spairs. A week of continuous sleighing is a boon, 
and two of them a portent. Even for most of New 
York State fifty days on runners is exceptional. 
So that the certain steady frost, the dry snow- 
cover that deepens week by week in the high coun- 
try, is as gratifying as minstrelsy to the music- 
thirsty. 

Winter at the capital is an enjoyment in itself. 
It would be enjoyable enough, just to recapture 
the careless thrill of childhood in snow-flight. 
But where nature, money, science, and daring 
have joyfully joined hands, the pleasures of sheer- 
est speed are doubled. To participate in them is 
to wear the crown of clean living. 

The three fundamental winter sports are sled- 
ding, skating, and sleighing. The three natural- 
ized achievements are ski-ing, tobogganning, and 
snow-shoeing. The three exotics are curling, ski- 
joring, and ice-tennis. The three continuous ex- 
tras are mountain-climbing, hockey, and snow- 
camping. And the great indoor sport is talking 
about it round the evening fire. 

Sledding at the winter capital is tempered to 
one's courage. Gentle slopes on the golf grounds 



WINTER PREFERRED 309 

will lead you almost to the Ausable half a mile 
away. While if you are St. Michael and wish to 
tempt the dragon, try a flexible flyer on the tobog- 
gan chutes. The one in the woods was built on 
the thunder-bolt pattern: a downward plunge, a 
curve with the world falling from under, and then 
the long descent at Jove's own speed. It is glo- 
rious. But you must stay faithful to the hollowed 
track. One runner mounting to the softer edge, 
and you will dissipate your complexion if not 
break your neck. Sometimes I wonder when first 
in our race-history man threw himself to the winds 
for a sensation. How incongruously noble it 
seems to hazard a thousand chances for some peak, 
some northern pole, some moment of descent I 
How nobly unreasoning ! 

The Club is planning a great spiral run down 
Cobble Mountain for toboggans, and when the 
plans mature, remotest Switzerland will not be 
in the running. At present the four-track tobog- 
gan shuttle, which is to be supplemented by a nine- 
track through the woods, offers delight consider- 
ably safer than the sledding. Tobogganing is 
also more sociable than flexible flying. To race 
another toboggan is the sum of hilarity. To upset 
is to taste youth in the green. To get to the 
bottom is not the easiest amusement. The to- 
boggans have been timed falling at the rate of 
sixty miles an hour. 



810 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Ski-ing gets the vote, I believe, because it is 
more godlike to fly erect than squatting. Again 
the risks are scaled to the prowess of the beginner. 
When the snow is too dry to cake and not too re- 
cently fallen, the littlest hill gives a fine momen- 
tum. To the novice it seems like dashing to de- 
struction. Imagine then the rush from a forty- 
foot incline. You get a clear flight through the 
air of over a hundred feet. And as though a hun- 
dred feet were too infantile, nature has prepared a 
take-off from a hill so mathematically right that 
you can soar for world's records and yet not part 
too perilously far from earth. For the performer 
it is an encroachment upon the pleasures of the 
next world. And to the spectator it looks like a 
try-out for suicides. Yet beyond bruises and 
sprains there have been no injuries. And it is 
an egregious challenge to one's nerve. There 
stands the scaffold. They say it doesn't hurt. 
Will you try it? 

Ski-ing opens to you a new level of existence. 
It is good fun to fall and welter in fresh snow; 
it is better to glide carefully across slight hills; 
but to master the art of Mercury, to laugh in the 
dazzle of broad plains, to run through the beckon- 
ing wood, above the little trees and with no effort, 
is a new gift. It becomes clear now that we have 
taken life too gravely. Let us go lightly and sleep 
easier. And, indeed, when the day is through, 



WINTER PREFERRED 311 

and you sit before the heartening fire, and a de- 
licious weariness creeps up your limbs and into 
your brain, and the whole world becomes a haze 
of comfort, you know that you have proved again 
the old formula you learned in the science class : 
for every action there is a reaction, opposite in 
effect, but equal in satisfaction. Ski-ing gives 
you a new kind of sleep. 

Enthusiasts who are not content with the sim- 
pler forms of suicide try ski-joring. Ski-joring 
is engaging with the devil three to one. You set 
out to vanquish a horse and two skis. The result 
is a compound of intoxication and regret. But 
success does lay flattering unction to the soul, for 
it is no amateur accomplishment to master speed 
and a horse that seems depleted of good sense, to 
beat the devil on two feet of snow. 

Ice-tennis is also a provocation wherein there 
is more than mirth that meets the ear. 

Ice-boating needs a larger lake than Placid for 
any great interest. Saranac, Tupper, Long, 
Raquette, Cranberry would give the owners larger 
surfaces. It already is a favorite pastime on 
Raquette. But even there sixty miles an hour 
soon devours a six-mile reach. 

Ice-hockey persists like an occupation at the 
winter capital. Even the Canadians come down 
to play. The Club spent much time and money in 
experimenting before they succeeded in making 



312 THE ADIRONDACKS 

the best rink in our country. Tennis courts, side 
by side, flooded nightly in polar temperature and 
lighted by 8000 candle-power were the solution 
of the day-and-night problem. Hockey by experts 
is very much like the carousing of souls through 
space. When I shall be translated, possibly I 
may be able to vibrate like an electric whip-cord. 
But a good hockey-player does it in the flesh. He 
runs swallow-like on the steel blades, and his 
swoops are falcon-sure. But his pursuit of pur- 
pose makes him more than bird. There is no 
more ecstatic game to play, none more incredible 
to watch. 

At the capital there is a space reserved for the 
curlers, and it is almost always in use. But only 
a Highland type-writer could do justice to the di- 
version, as I suppose it should be called. To curl 
properly you must have been raised on porridge 
and Scotch oaths. The game requires skill, 
strength, and all the other virtues except hilarity. 
From hearsay I had imagined it a pastime that 
the old fellows who somehow had outlasted cricket 
took to in their antiquity. But not so. You have 
to slam an immense stone of granite across a pond 
while your partner with a broom stands by. If 
the stone has not enough momentum, he sweeps 
like a chambermaid to speed it. And if it is going 
too fast he sweeps equally hard to hinder it. Then 
there is a celebration over the result that seems 



WINTER PREFERRED 313 

insufferably exaggerated until you think of golf. 

There are twenty miles of ski-track through 
the capital woods ; but there are twenty times that 
mileage of sleighing near by and fifty objectives to 
sleigh to. For companionship and easy comfort 
a sleigh knows no competitor, and Essex County 
as a sleighing ground challenges comparison with 
more famous fields. But the point is not in ex- 
celling; the planet is big enough for a thousand 
excellences. The point is always being wherever 
it abounds. Here are some pictures: the wind 
is blowing banners from white peaks, and spirals 
dance over the hills ; great clouds of white sweep 
over the lake and across the plains; the horses 
walk, and the gale sings upon the telegraph wires. 
Or again : it is a road through the forest ; the sun- 
light slants yellow underneath quiet trees ; on the 
spruces lie piles of snow; the horse makes no 
noise ; the runners make no noise ; the snow is so 
soft and deep that it hushes thought. Or yet 
again: it is a night of full moon; the mountains 
rise about the broad valley, and the forests fall 
away from their white shoulders; the cold has a 
crystal purity ; all space is spread out before us ; 
only behind the spruces lies an unfathomable 
darkness; the speed of the horses is gratify- 
ing; after all, infinity is not what we most de- 
sire. 

There are places where the ski, the toboggan. 



314 THE ADIRONDACKS 

and the sleigh cannot go, and there you '11 need 
the snow-shoe. Snow-shoes may not be an inven- 
tion of the devil, but certainly of an irreverent 
god. The sight of our divine form a-waddle is a 
spectacle for mirth. The first excursion, more- 
over, isn't likely to go better than the second, 
for by then you get adventurous. The shoes come 
loose. They come loose again. They trip you 
and get enmeshed in trees and rub you and come 
loose some more. After an hour of this you be- 
come acutely interested in the mileage home. But 
it 's a handy knack to have. The long shoes for 
the plain, the round ones for the wood, and you 
can go anywhere in the white world except over 
precipices. It gives you a masterful sense to 
stump along with your duffle on a toboggan, know- 
ing that no weather, no predicament of snow can 
embarrass your comfort. And it is the only way 
to get the view. I have climbed the Giant on six 
feet of snow in less time than I could have gone 
up in summer and been rewarded in a way that 
only winter landscapes know. 

The deepest thrills run quietest, and I have 
purposely left to the last the supremest enjoy- 
ment of winter — the living in it. The only pre- 
caution one need take is to make sure of his win- 
ter, for by winter camping I do not mean the sur- 
prise by slush. 

In the big woods there is actually less hardship 



WINTER PREFERRED 317 

in winter than in summer. Let us count. There 
is no heat. There is no thirst. There are no in- 
sects. There is no wet. There are no spoiled 
provisions. There is cold, but five minutes ' lively 
chopping after getting up will make you warm 
enough to cook breakfast. And you will prob- 
ably wear only a shirt more than in the summer. 
At night you do have to be ingenious with fire, 
but it is possible. In winter, too, travel is only 
slightly more difficult, and you never have to carry 
a canoe. Also, if you climb, it is easier to find the 
way back to your camp again along the webbed 
trail than through summer moss. 

In either case you do not go to the woods to 
escape hardship. You go for fish or freedom, for 
hunting or for health, and if I am not deceived 
as to your own character, you cannot help getting 
a lot of other things thrown in ; growth and beauty, 
perhaps. 

Probably there is no such thing as a scale of 
beauty; and certainly the winter woods are no 
more beautiful than the woods of spring or sum- 
mer or fall. But they are an expansion, a new 
lane with many a curious turning. Few have 
tried this lane that leads to new adventures in the 
country of white enchantment. But those who 
have tried it come back clear-eyed and filled with 
wonder and delight. 



CHAPTER XIV ■ 

WEATHEEING THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 

THE complexities of climate are revealed to 
the Adirondack voyageur in exuberant com- 
pleteness. For specialties of wet and cold, 
drought and sunstroke, one may travel to special 
places; but to get all these at once in reasonable 
amounts one has but to remain within the boun- 
daries of the Park. Nowhere else on our green 
globe, in the space of a week and without moving, 
can one enjoy weathers so ready, so entire, and so 
superlative. 

For this reason any remarks that railroad fold- 
ers and even more considered literature may make 
upon wardrobes and other anti-storm devices must 
remain inconclusive and perhaps idle. The sever- 
ities of March so instantly succeed the tender- 
nesses of May, the simplicities of Indian summer 
are so abruptly invaded by the contrariness of 
June, that one's preparation to be ample must be 
diversified beyond patience. 

Yet, out of justice to an atmosphere that is so 
constantly being tried before our very petty juries, 

318 



THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 319 

I must let the doctors witness to tlie fact that 
there is no more healthful climate to be encoun- 
tered in this our playful vale of tears. Blizzards 
there are, and most amazing thunders, but there 
are whole days, too, of calm, and days of azure 
western winds and nights more delicious than 
draughts of spring water. 

Taken all in all, the natives of the Adirondacks 
die only from over-feeding. There is no hay- 
fever at Adirondack altitudes ; there are no colds ; 
tuberculosis is checked; nerves quiet down, and 
insomnia is impossible. Good hours, good food, 
good society, and good air will rout the most ac- 
complished doctor. Health soon comes to be the 
only complaint among those restless visitors who 
are under a sense of strain unless they have some- 
thing to be under a sense of strain with. 

And this miracle of change has been wrought 
by the admirable system of climatic excesses 
known as Adirondack weather. Unfortunately no 
wealth of data, no embarrassment of averages can 
quite foretell what atmospheric adventure one is 
to enjoy next. But there is a vague routine of 
conditions that one can set down without seeming 
entirely superstitious. As most campers arrive in 
early summer, I shall begin with that. 

Summer in the Adirondacks is conservative. 
There is usually enough heat to draw attention 
to the season, but the achievements of the ther- 



320 THE ADIRONDACKS 

mometer are not remarkable. Ninety degrees is 
never registered at Lake Placid and seldom at 
altitudes below fifteen hundred. However, I have 
seen villages that are far from water shimmer 
with heat like an able-bodied desert at midday. 
The nights in such places are always refreshing. 
No matter if the thermometer at noon is register- 
ing in the hundreds, before da"wn you will be under 
one blanket and maybe two. 

Of far more consequence to the tenter is the 
amount of rain, and it is just of this that the most 
unaffected liar fears to prophesy. July may be 
wet and August dry, or August wet after a dry 
July, or both may swim or swelter. One can rely 
on nothing but the certainty of excesses. Yet 
everybody lives through it. I have seen forty 
days of rain, a soggy w^ilderness, and moldering 
clothes bring a whole crowd of Christians into 
an ardor of execration, and yet they come up 
regularly to their meals, not missing once. I have 
seen forty days of drought, a woodland that 
crackles underfoot, and a sun that crackles over- 
head, and the same hardy crowd appearing thrice 
daily with the same bestial curiosity and without 
lapse. As Lynn explained once to a lady who 
could not get used to her shoes molding upon her 
feet, *' Either you 're ill or you 're not ill. But 
you 're not ill, so swamp life must bo unmitigated 
wholesome. ' ' I think it was Lynn who was whole- 



THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 321 

some, really, for the lady remained well, despite 
the acknowledged insalubrity of swamps. 

In summer there is one feature of the weather 
that baffles the plain mind. It is the ability of the 
mountains to shower. It rains from the east, of 
course, and from the south, but also from the west 
and other points. The rain balks at nothing when 
once fairly started. Whole regiments of showers 
troop over the ridges, and there is but one sign 
of their discontinuing : that is when the mists rise 
upon the mountains. No matter with what prom- 
ise the day has begun, no matter if the wind blows 
from the usually sterling west, if mist gathers 
upon the mountain or gathered mists descend, 
there need be no misunderstanding : dull weather 
is certain. On the other hand, no matter how sul- 
len or how low the clouds, if they but rise along 
the ridges, fair weather will not be long post- 
poned. 

July and August are the conventional months 
for camping, but they are not the best. Being the 
warmest, they permit more laziness as to night 
fires ; but a fortnight of September will build one 
up faster than a whole month of summer. In 
September dark comes earlier, which is a dis- 
advantage, but there are no clotted showers, no 
days of hazy heat, no insects. Rain it does, but 
rarely, and such days are followed by skies of 
deeper blue, air of a more delicious quality than 



322 THE ADIRONDACKS 

ever July gave. Once or twice the mercury falls 
below the freezing point, and you have new in- 
timacies with your fire. Midday is comfortably 
warm. The woods become almost articulate, so 
vivid are the colors. The summer crowd has gone. 
The inhabitants put away the tourist countenance 
and become again friends to speak with. 

If September is the silvery month, October is 
the golden. Eains are cold now and are apt to 
end up in a spit of big flakes, and a shack is more 
convenient than a tent. But for whole weeks be- 
tween storms the sun sifts through on the new- 
fallen leaves, and the bear fattens on the beeches. 
The mercury shades off into the 'teens pretty reg- 
ularly at a clear dawn, but the snows disappear in 
the next day's brilliance. 

November may be anything that is no longer 
autumn and not yet winter. It is an unusual 
November that furnishes much sledding; yet there 
can be boreal onslaughts. Master Thomas's 
guide, Archie of the French blood, told me of 
being caught in a motor boat on Indian Lake 
when the big freeze blew down upon them No- 
vember 24, 1916. The ice formed so rapidly that 
he was forced to land on an island and walk all 
night to keep alive. That night the government 
thermometer registered sixteen degrees below 
zero. "November, then, ends the season for safe 
amateur exploits under canvas. The risks become 



THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 323 

too great. But the mountains never offer wider 
views. 

With December comes the highland winter. 
The change is made overnight. Indian summer, 
which during November has lulled every one into 
a sense of perpetual peace, sometimes survives 
into the Christmas month. But suddenly the bal- 
ance is overturned; the pent-up forces roll down 
from the north without dissimulation. The mer- 
cury drops impressively far below zero, at times 
to minus forty. About Lake Placid and on the 
western plateau, the snow falls to the depth of 
two or three feet. All wheels are changed to 
runners for three or four months. The Adiron- 
dacks of summer is lost beyond recollection. 
Only the outlines of the mountains remain, clearer, 
bluer, far more ethereal. To come upon White- 
face, soaring white against the blue, is to be ex- 
alted. A dazzling morning climb will kindle every 
honest sense that man possesses. 

January and February show dark skies broken 
by tense brilliancies. The cold ranges from forty- 
five below to forty-five above, the commonest ex- 
tremes being thirty and thirty. Almost always 
there comes a period of thaw to exaggerate the re- 
lapse. But only in exceptional winters does the 
ground uncover before March. And this security 
makes tenting once more possible. For with snow 
to bank the walls and a cold so dry that a shirt is 



324 THE ADIRONDACKS 

overheating when you chop, there can be tasted 
pleasures of appetite, of exertion, and of sleep 
that lie beyond the range of comment. 

March varies greatly with locality. On the 
higher levels snow falls throughout the month, 
while on the lower, the maple sap begins to run. 
The days, however, are long, and despite winter's 
hold and zero temperatures, the sunlight has a 
quality that is not long to be disregarded, and 
between blizzards icicles melt along the eaves. 

Only with April comes disappointment. By 
now, you reason, you have deserved spring. But 
the storms are still of snow; drifts form higher 
than a horse's head along the cuts; the mercury 
still sinks to zero on abnormal mornings ; the lakes 
are often unbroken sheets of snowy ice, unsafe 
for further sport and unsightly to one desiring 
spring. As the month advances, the change is 
sure to come. The lakes free themselves in a 
night. A red-winged blackbird appears along 
some shore; the robins come, and one day you 
hear the song-sparrow. Farmers seek their fields. 

But even May can fool them. If it does warm 
up then, killing frosts are likely to come in June. 
It is best to give May over to cold and wet and 
let the frosts whiten on sodden turf at the begin- 
ning, for then there may be some hope of a reason- 
able spring before the end. For the average man 
May is no month to camp. On the other hand, one 



THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 327 

would be quite deficient if the pulse did not quicken 
at the smell of the warming woods, at the sight 
of the advancing miracle. 

To be ready for June is to be ready for Para- 
dise, if June herself is ready. For sometimes she 
is cold and drizzly. But even at the worst the 
birds are fully rehearsed, and the flowers will not 
be put off, and there is a softness in the skies 
and on the fluffy clouds that is the shining of the 
spirit of spring. When June is at its height, it 
is no longer an invitation. It is a command. 

This climatological commentary has, I suppose, 
told little about the weather you will meet. Yet 
I doubt if facts or even angels could do more. 
You are welcome to the facts. The annual rain- 
fall in the mountains comes to about 50 inches; 
New York City has 40. The annual mean of tem- 
perature ranges from Essex County's 36 degrees 
to 42 and 44 for the others ; New York City's range 
is 50 to 54. It is a cold day that registers zero 
in New York, while 25 below is not unusual over 
all the mountain counties. In 1904 there was an 
official notice of - 46. In the Adirondacks, frosts 
occur every month of the year, though rarely in 
July. In New York, May, June, July, August, 
September are frost-free, although outside of the 
city May 15 is a safer date to measure from. 

But do not let extremes frighten you away. 
There are many compensating advantages. Vast 



328 THE ADIRONDACKS 

reservoirs of ozone are at your service. The 
germs of colds expire from neglect and loneli- 
ness. Swift contrasts of storm and shine speed 
up your intellectual processes until legions of new 
brain cells are doing their bit. Greater storms, 
intenser cold, serener calms than more moderate 
climates produce, create undreamt-of beauties. 
And if it seems wet to you, remember that there 
must be some virtue in dampness or how should 
our Anglo-S^xon kinsfolk still endure I 

The A B and Z of surviving weather is 
warmth. My hardy comrade and less hardy self 
found that we could get wet and stay wet with 
impunity as long as we kept our extremities warm. 
The chief danger to a camper is cold feet. Many 
times it rained off and on for a week. Fires were 
only of small good. They kept us cheerful, but 
it would have taken the resources of Satan himself 
to have dried out our quarters thoroughly. But 
socks, caps, even wristlets saved the day. 

There were some other axioms that kept our 
courage up. A heavy thunder-storm in the woods 
is a great drama, and we wondered sometimes if 
the agencies were sufficiently rehearsed; so we 
said, ' ' You will never see the flash that kills you. ' ' 
Sometimes it got uncomfortably cold in the autumn 
rain-storms, and Lynn used to say, ''Well, if it 
gets much colder, it '11 snow and make us com- 
fortable." I recommend that thought. And once 



THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 329 

when we were in great danger from a squall, he 
paddled without a word until we were in the lee 
of a point ; and only then I found that he had been 
in torture from cramp. Nerve like that, and com- 
monsense, and a streak of humor will dominate 
worse tempests than those that sweep the Park. 

There are but three things left, I believe, that 
the wit and fortitude of man have failed to harness 
for his good: weather, death, and bugs. We put 
up with the weather; we postpone death, but the 
insect problem beggars intellect. It is not ex- 
actly fair to lure an honest citizen to the North 
Woods without mention of the terror by night. 
A thousand may fall at his side and ten thousand 
by his right hand ; yet by the prophets ! there are 
a million to take their place ! And judging by the 
bald head of a clergyman we once met by the road- 
side, there is no security for the godly in fly-time. 

But I promise not to exaggerate. I can truth- 
fully say that if a man is prepared, the pest of 
flies will make but negligible inroads upon his 
contentment. 

The fly season opens with punkies about the 
middle of May, is augmented about June first by 
the black fly, and is further reinforced by the mos- 
quito soon after. The black fly ceases to annoy 
by mid- August, the mosquito succumbs to old age 
or indigestion by the first of September or before, 
and the punky appears thereafter only on very 



330 THE ADIRONDACKS 

propitiously close days. From June 15 till 
August 15 back in the woods or even on shore on 
sultry afternoons this triumvirate is likely to ruf- 
fle the calmest, but unless you 've left your dope 
in camp, they never drive one to thoughts of self- 
extinction as they are reported to do in higher 
latitudes. 

The affair, after all, is personal. I can only re- 
late our impressions. We had a preference for 
the black fly because he gives you a sporting prop- 
osition. He attacks in numbers and he '11 eat you 
behind your back, but with a patient accuracy on 
your part, you can avenge your blood. Whether 
it is gluttony or not, I have never determined. 
As Stewart Edward White says, "You can 
get him every time. In this is great, heart-lifting 
joy." 

In the Adirondacks the black fly does not annoy 
you after twilight, rarely visits camp if it is put 
where it should be, and objects to the compound 
of sweet oil and citronella, half and half. This 
same dope was effectual for punkies also. The 
last week of June, which was hot and rather wet, 
we spent in the deepest woods, fishing. On three 
of those days the flies did not appear; on three 
they were bad. Frequent applications of the cit- 
ronella gave us relief. And for the lunch hour 
a smudge kept us serene. The punky, however, 
despite his pin-point size, is no despicable antago- 



THE WEATHER AND THE FLY 331 

nist. Why the Indians went to the trouble of 
kindling fires before which to torture their pris- 
oner I cannot understand, when they had only to 
strip the poor man and turn on the punkies. If 
the punky were as large as a bee and kept his pres- 
ent ferocity, no one could remain a half hour in 
the woods. But he is not, by the benevolence of 
the Provider, and since the little beggar cannot 
swim in sweet oil, we are saved. 

Not every smudge is successful. We kept a 
pail for the purpose, its bottom punctured for 
ventilation, into which we shoveled some coals 
from the cooking-fire and then scattered some 
moss or grass on top. This not only was portable, 
but perpetual. It would smolder an entire after- 
noon without replenishing and in its lee was 
safety. I know now why Brunhilde took such 
elaborate precautions. 

The punky and the black fly are part of the 
woods. You accept them as you accept portages 
and the trout's day off, without oaths or bitter- 
ness. But the mosquito is different. It is an 
interloper. It observes no hours. It poisons the 
well it drinks from. And when you are on your 
back and at its mercy it gloats ! 

The Adirondack mosquito is not so plentiful as 
his Jersey swamp kindred, which in turn are rela- 
tively few, compared to the vast acreage of these 
creatures on the northern plains. Mr. White and 



332 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Mr. Seton have chapters descriptive of their con- 
centrations that are as fascinating as a murder 
trial. But in the Adirondacks on a still July 
evening there are enough to make you give thanks 
for a mosquito-bar. Against him a smudge is 
doubtful defense and dope useless. Also, unless 
you are morally sure that your cage is perfect, 
you will not sleep. For that is the psychology of 
it. You are willing for him to grow apoplectic 
upon your carcass, but you resent the te deum, 
and you resent it to the extent of keeping awake 
to protect your property. 

The day comes, however, when you realize that 
it is all over, that for some time past you have 
neither slapped nor sworn. For a moment you 
wonder. Then you appreciate what it means, and 
your heart beats once extra, and for the pleasure 
of this new immunity, two months of the sleep- 
less little insect seems small pay. 



CHAPTER XV 

ON HEKMITS AND OTHER TRAGEDIES 

NOTHING could be nearer half a truth than to 
conceive of the Adirondacks as purely a 
pleasure land. The State owns about half of it 
and wishes all possible pleasure to be squeezed 
out of it that does not interfere with the serious 
offices of nature in growing wood, multiplying 
game, and toning down the climate. 

The other half is divided up among lumber 
companies, private preserves, and small holdings, 
which are mostly very small. 

A lumber company is a source of fortune to its 
stock-holders and a source of misfortune to every- 
body else. Nearly all of them follow the estab- 
lished maxim of slash and sell out. It has paid 
in the past because it was so easy to move on 
to the next bit of primeval and repeat. But woods 
will not grow while you wait, and the stands of 
primeval forest that remain are about as rare as 
primeval heath hens — not all gone, but going. 

Fire follows the ax, the injudicious ax, because 
of the heaps of slash, and taxes follow the fire be- 
cause of flood and drought. There is nothing 

333 



334 THE ADIRONDACKS 

much left to follow the taxes except possibly one's 
peace of mind. This can be soothed only by the 
scientific hope that some backwoods inventor will 
bring out a substitute for newspaper pulp and the 
other common abuses of wood. So far that hope 
is transcendental rather than scientific. 

"While the lumberman is taking the clean cut to 
bankruptcy, the private preserve owner is, in 
many cases, administering his talent in accord- 
ance with strict forestry principles. Unfortu- 
nately on some estates, falsely called preserves, 
the most ruthless slashing is in progress. How- 
ever, the great individual holdings are justified. 
If it had not been for them the forest preserve 
would have fallen into the hands of the rapacious. 
To-day they protect nearly a million acres, main- 
tain woodlands that supply water and that are 
refuges for game. No work on the Adirondacks 
is quite complete without individual mention and 
description of these estates, some of which com- 
prise the most striking of all the Adirondack 
attractions. But big changes are about to be 
made, so that it is necessary for the present to 
omit the names of the forty-odd private-preserve 
owners. 

But to hasten on to the tragedies. The country 
embraced by the park and including the two great 
lakes to the east of it is not only a storehouse of 
legend, but also a complete outfitting establish- 



ON HERMITS AND OTHER TRAGEDIES 337 

ment for the writer of chronicles. From it he can 
produce wars and raids and treaties enough to 
make any historian famous. It is an arsenal of 
colonial custom. But in addition to the Indian 
myth and the British redcoat there is a third layer 
of interest deposited on this fertile field for re- 
search — the story of business adventure. And 
some day a Gibbon or a Macaulay will investigate 
it and hold us spellbound with his tale of the an- 
cient struggle to wrest riches from the wild beauty 
of the wilderness. A few specimen disappoint- 
ments follow: 

In 1792 an Alexander Macomb paid eightpence 
an acre for a bit of land containing 3,934,899 acres. 
He soon became insolvent. 

The story of Brown's Tract — the John Brown 
for whom was named Brown University and not 
the John Brown of Ossawatomie — reads like a 
well-arranged tragedy with lurid catastrophes 
here and there to heighten interest. He is de- 
scribed as *'a man of magnificent projects and ex- 
traordinary enterprise. ' ' He bought an enormous 
estate. He made roads which the frost destroyed. 
He built mills which rotted from disuse. He died 
leaving his lands still a wilderness. A Prussian 
son-in-law, Herreshoff, succeeded him. Herre- 
shofiF evidently had imbibed some of the old man's 
pertinacity. He declared, *'I will settle this tract 
or settle myself." He did the latter with a pistol 



338 THE ADIRONDACKS 

after he had run through all his own and his 
friends' money. Nat Foster, the famous trapper, 
slept in the old buildings until he shot an Indian 
and decided that he had better leave. His suc- 
cessor shot somebody else and drowned himself 
in Nick's Lake. Brown's Tract to-day is still 
mainly wilderness, and whoever wrote the fasci- 
nating report of the forest commission in 1893 
summed up the whole affair in these words : 

The soil was none of the best, the climate was cold, the sum- 
mers were short and the winters were long; the markets were 
distant and the roads to them were almost impassable during 
much of the year. One by one the settlers, growing weary of 
the undertaking, sold out their improvements or abandoned 
them and with their families left the forest hamlet to seek 
other homes. And now the old dwellings, with two or three 
exceptions, have disappeared; the school-house and its chil- 
dren are no longer to be seen; the fences are gone, and the 
once cleared fields have reverted to their original state. 

Elsewhere I have told of Pierre Chassanis's at- 
tempted settlement of his half million acres and 
his consequent disasters. 

The old dream of establishing a great estate on 
which to dispense hospitality in baronial style 
lured a James Watson to the Independence River. 
There he cut his throat. 

Two men, Totten and Crossfield by name, out- 
did Macomb in the way of bargains, buying parts 
of Warren, Essex, Hamilton, and Herkimer coun- 
ties, over a million acres, at threepence an acre. 



ON HERMITS AND OTHER TRAGEDIES 339 

Their associates, however, were strong for King 
George when the war broke out, and their land 
was seized. 

And so the story goes. The wildness of the 
country allured; its hardships disillusioned. 
Army captains, who were given grants on the old 
military tract for repulsing hostile savages, could 
not work them. Sea captains tried to settle in 
the woods, one Chase saying that *'he would 
rather have lost his right in H'eaven than title 
to this soil." No matter how diverse the begin- 
nings, the end was bankruptcy and discourage- 
ment, the chief variation resting in the manner of 
demise. 

Baronial projects of colonial days were suc- 
ceeded by better founded, but no more successful, 
schemes by corporations. Some of their remains 
still endure. It is not unusual to come upon some 
ruined foundry in mid-forest, a smelter for ores 
that could not be transported, a grist mill for 
grains that would not grow. Mr. Henderson of 
the Upper Adirondack Iron Works competes with 
Herreshoff of Brown's Tract for the biggest 
losses. Both began with iron and ended with 
lead, but they say that Mr. Henderson's shooting 
was accidental. There is one place on the prop- 
erty of the late mine owner where the Hudson 
flows over a dam of natural iron, and the whole 
country seems to be underlaid with rich deposits of 



840 THE ADIRONDACKS 

magnetic ore. But the fifty-mile haul eats away 
all profit. 

To-day it is out of the indirect resources that 
the inhabitants prosper. Garnet mines furnish 
much abrasive material, talc fifty thousand tons a 
year; there is marble in St. Lawrence county; 
gneisses and granite and Potsdam sandstone, 
lumber, game, and water-power, each yields its 
revenues. But neither farming nor lumbering 
nor mining nor ruthless slaughter of animals can 
return riches comparable to those given freely by 
thousands of men and women whose delight is the 
wilderness and its life. Not one extensive effort 
to subdue the wilderness has succeeded. But in 
every corner of it men who have taken it at its 
own terms are making a living, hard often, but 
not without its peculiar returns in health, hon- 
esty, and a certain, freedom. 

In every corner of it, too, have lived men who 
through a superior skill in their duties or through 
a marked personality have won distinction and 
remembrance. Many of these have been inn- 
keepers like Paul Smith, Bartlett, Root. Many 
have been guides like Orson Phelps, George Beede, 
John Cheney. Some have been trappers like Nat 
Foster, some hermits like Jimmy O'Kane, some 
Indians. There is a great company of these silent 
men, memories for the most part now, who lived 
sturdily and died strong. Conditions are less 



ON HERMITS AND OTHER TRAGEDIES 341 

rugged now, and so the rough hard-fibered school 
is passing. But the tradition of it will endure. 

Of all the Indians, Mitchel Sabattis of Long 
Lake, pure-blooded, who died in 1906 at the age 
of ninety, is best known. A mountain is his mon- 
ument. He spoke French, English, and two In- 
dian dialects and told no lies in any of them. He 
collected the funds for the Long Lake church and 
was a very worthy man. In his day his skill as 
a guide was remarkable. He remembered having 
shot twenty moose, nine panthers, and any num- 
ber of wolves. 

Pezeeko was an old Indian who lived on his 
lake, now spelled Piseco. Sangermo was the hero 
of many stories of the North. Sabele's wigwam 
was pitched on Indian Lake as late as 1848. 

Indians are getting scarce. But the hermit 
stays. A hermit is popularly regarded as an in- 
teresting failure. This, I suppose, is a revulsion 
of feeling from the old religious days when 
everybody who could get away from home ran 
off to the desert and slept on tacks. But, as some- 
body wickedly says, a man who sacrifices himself 
sacrifices everybody else first. And the families 
of the men who had gone off to mortify their flesh 
discovered that they were being mortified as well. 
So the hermit was made to feel unpopular. This 
threw him into a dilemma. If he returned to civ- 
ilization, it would be a sign of weakness; if he 



342 THE ADIRONDACKS 

stayed away, he would be abusing civilization. 
The status of hermits became delicate. And it 
has remained delicate, not to say one-sided. The 
world calls the hermit an interesting failure. The 
hermit would retort that the world is an uninter- 
esting one — would retort but doesn't, because it 
isn't the hermit's role to retort. As soon as a 
hermit retorts, he ceases to be a hermit and be- 
comes a normal being. Therefore we shall al- 
ways be in darkness as to how a hermit regards 
himself. Thoreau's diary furnishes only relative 
information. 

The hermits of the Adirondacks belonged to 
many categories. There was the draft-fugitive, 
the ex-bank-cashier, the refugee from sorrow. 
But those have gone. The Civil War conscripts 
have died, bank-cashiers are always caught now, 
and for my part I have never found anybody re- 
sembling those oppressed spirits of fiction, who 
are sequestered by romantic pens in the depth of 
the forest to brood over their griefs in silence 
and solitude. The hermits I have met have been 
kindly old men, relics who found it cheaper to 
live where board and lodging were to be had for 
the bother of pottering around. Some of them 
mutter to themselves, and their beards want wash- 
ing, and the fences about their gardens are very 
rickety indeed. But they take time to eat, and 



ON HERMITS AND OTHER TRAGEDIES 343 

have nmch to think about, and if they fail to put 
their thoughts down, how can you prove they 
haven't any? It is the writers who give them- 
selves away. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE SPIRIT OF THE PARK 

THE spirit of the Adirondack Park is stated 
in the law that says that the land ''shall be 
forever reserved and maintained for the use of 
the people." Every such statement, when backed 
up by enforcement, is a victory for democracy, 
and every victory for democracy is an advance- 
ment of the truest civilization. It is strange 
that we should have to go to the woods for the 
fulfilment of civilization. But it is very satisfac- 
tory and comforting. 

As a nation we have got used to the idea of 
game refuges. Yellowstone Park is a success. 
We are just getting used to bird sanctuaries. 
Mrs. Sage and the V/estern States are seeing to 
that. But the notion of humanity preserves is 
fairly novel. We have our little air holes in the 
cities, which we call parks, and we have some sec- 
tions of the West roped off by law which the East 
is welcome to roam over if it can pay the carfare 
to them. But it has remained for New York State 
to set aside more than a tithe of its total area 

344 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PARK 3i7 

where men and women can seek sanctuary from 
cities and heat and the everlasting press of things. 
And New York State has done more. She has 
not only offered her mountains and lakes and 
woods to the tired student from Ithaca, the tired 
philosopher from the Hub, the tired business man 
from everywhere, but she has made trails through 
the mountains, has stocked the streams and lakes, 
and is doing her best to preserve the forest. The 
citizens of the State pay for this, and anybody 
can enjoy their gift for a thank-you. All that 
they request is care in the enjoyment. Great care 
is the least return that we can make. 

The spirit of the Park is mutual forbearance for 
the common good. That should be the motto for 
the whole New World. Our ancestors came here 
for that very thing. Greed has made us forget 
at times. But in the Park once more there is 
scope to practise it, to begin again. 

The rules of the Park are easy to imagine if 
you 've never seen them, easy to understand when 
you do see. They forbid everything that tends to 
damage the property belonging to somebody else. 
They encourage everything that does not inter- 
fere with the happiness of others. And the sec- 
ond column is much longer than the first. 

The Park is not only open to America to visit, 
but her men and their families are invited to come 
and camp in it, to subsist on its fish, to enjoy its 



348 THE ADIRONDACKS 

game under a liberal license. And there are but 
three major regulations: 

The first asks the cooperation of all good sports- 
men in preventing forest fires. 

The second asks their rigid observance of the 
necessary game laws. 

And the third requests the utmost care in avoid- 
ing the pollution of the water supply. 

No thinking person can be blind to the lasting 
damage wrought by a forest fire. Yet unless it 
becomes the invariable rule of every camper, fish- 
erman, and hunter to see that his match is out be- 
fore he throws it down, to know that his cigarette 
is dead before he drops it, he will some day start 
a blaze. That man is not a good sportsman if he 
does n't carry water to pour over his fire before 
he leaves it, if only for an hour. It would make 
a raven weep to fly over some of the tracts of 
ruined forest that we saw. 

A card to the Commission at Albany will bring 
the syllabus of laws relating to fish and game. A 
dollar will buy you the new map showing the 
lands belonging to the State, which amount to 
about fifty per cent, of the territory within the 
blue boundaries of the Park. 

The rules about your tent are very simple. If 
the tent does not have a platform, you can pitch 
it anywhere not too near a spring without get- 
ting a license. If it has a platform, the Commis- 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PARK 349 

sion will grant you permission if you will inform 
them of the site desired. They will even reserve 
that site for you for the next year, though you 
may not do so without their annual consent. You 
may build a permanent camp if it is of the open 
kind, but it must only be used for reasonable 
periods. Portable canvas houses are allowed. 
You are not allowed to chop down trees, but you 
do not need to, for there is enough dead wood re- 
cently fallen to heat up Nova Zembla. The Com- 
mission will send you the ^'Circular of Informa- 
tion Relating to Lands and Forest" on request. 

In this Park, then, you can squat, fancy free and 
fully fed, for months at a time. There are 600 
miles of lake line to choose your camp site from. 
There are about 1450 lakes and ponds and no- 
body knows how many hills and mountains in 
the Park. You have about 4,000,000 acres to 
roam over within limits, and the average altitude 
is about 2000 feet, high enough for a change, not 
high enough to over-exhilarate. You have about 
16 rivers to paddle on and thousands of little 
streams to fish in. There are about 50,000 deer 
to watch, and you won't be shot while watching 
them, for the law requires the hunter to see horns 
three inches long before he shoots. The wood- 
cock, pheasants, ducks, quail are increasing. 
There are about forty kinds of quadrupeds you 
can set your restless children to observing; and 



350 THE ADIRONDACKS 

when they know all those, there are a hundred 
varieties of birds. There are hundreds of miles of 
excellent motor road and dozens of good hotels; 
yet there are places still inaccessible except to 
those who are willing to undergo much toil for 
much pleasure. There are three great routes, 
each over a hundred miles long, two of them for 
canoe, that will prove the extent, the wildness, and 
the beauty of this Park which it is your privilege 
to enjoy. 

The wisdom of the people in their outlay is only 
half told by the figures. But they are impress- 
ive. A million people reinforce their health 
there every year. The water supply for a still 
greater New York has been insured. Two mil- 
lion five hundred thousand horse-power, equiva- 
lent to an annual consumption of twenty-five mil- 
lion tons of coal, can be generated by the falling 
waters. But the best is the unfigured good. 

I hope with a greedy energy that some day New 
York's sister commonwealths, though less richly 
endowed, will each set aside substantial amounts 
of their forest-land, their mountains, and their 
streams for human sanctuary. Each State con- 
tains desert hills, and hills not already turned 
into deserts, where reforestation is a crime to 
omit. Each of the Appalachian States could own 
some park whose streams might be stocked and 



THE SPIRIT OF THE PARK 351 

whose woods and defiles might furnish camp sites 
for its people. And well they might. For that 
way gladness lies: in health and the exercise of 
liberty which is the spirit of all parks. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Duffle 

ASCOT'S heart may be in the Highlands, but 
ours were in our duflfle bags. 

A dufiSe bag is a cylindrical bit of waterproof- 
ing in which your household gods are safe when 
it rains. Adam probably used one to remove his 
new wardrobe from Eden. But he did n't call it a 
duffle bag. It was first called that in the Adiron- 
dacks. The old Dutch traders took their beads 
and looking-glasses (made in Duffel, Holland) 
into the interior to trade off with the Mohawks for 
skins and real estate. Hence duflfle bags. 

When you go into the woods the contents of a 
duffle bag are useful and attractive. When you 
come out they are useful. Stern necessity has 
sifted them. It is the same with this chapter. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

I am hopelessly in debt. Before we went in 
our friends loaned us their wide knowledge of the 
Adirondack region. While we were in old guides 
and young guides, hotel-men and club-owners, fire- 
wardens and game-wardens, and even one high- 

352 



DUFFLE 353 

wayman, proved again the famous hospitality of 
the North Woods. Since coming out the librar- 
ians have done their bit. Therefore it would be 
a poor thing to mention just a few of the good- 
hearted people who offered us food or photo- 
graphs or information or shelter or in one case, 
dear Mr. Hale, arctics. But those bits of duf- 
fle will always stay in our memory. 

A PARTIAL, BIBLIOGRAPHY 

But the debt to authors can be more explicitly 
paid. I wish I owed to more. Indeed, the bibliog- 
raphy of the Adirondacks compared to that of 
the White Mountains is amazingly scant. It is 
made up of guide books, magazine articles, com- 
mission reports, and a few books. 

Probably the most detailed guide is E. E. Wal- 
lace's which reached its sixth edition in 1878. S. 
E. Stoddart then came to the fore, continuing into 
the nineties. Then came Baedeker. But within 
the last three years new acquisitions by the State, 
new hotels, and the newest motors make a guide 
book pant to keep up with the changes. 

The books of travel were written in the seven- 
ties and eighties when the wonder of this new 
territory was first breaking upon an astonished 
East. Mr. A. B. Street's accounts were enthusi- 
astic enough. A Mr. Northrup took several excur- 
sions to the western plateau. Mr. N. B. Sylvester 



354 THE ADIRONDACKS 

wrote graphic and historic chapters on the Adi- 
rondacks. Verplanck Colvin, though a surveyor, 
pictured the country with enthusiasm. Professor 
Emmons was its geological expert. J. R. Sims, 
Headley, the historian, Agassiz, Audubon, the 
''Personal Reminiscences" of Chittenden (pp. 
139-168), all contain valuable references to the 
North Woods. B. J. Lossing wrote of the Dutch 
customs in his "Hudson from the Wilderness to 
the Sea," and John Burroughs has several refer- 
ences to enjoyments originating in those woods, 
notably in ''Wake Robin" (pp. 77-108) and in 
"Locusts and Wild Honey" (pp. 167-196). 
Dr. Henry Van Dyke's account of his ascent of 
Ampersand in "Little Rivers" is told with an 
artist's accuracy and vividness. P. Deming pub- 
lished a book "Adirondack Stories," sad little 
folk tales. 

There are several books, however, that have 
seized the spirit of the region and expressed it in 
living words. Murray's "Adventures in the Wil- 
derness," Charles Dudley Warner's "Backlog 
Studies," Emerson's "Adirondacs," Dr. C. H. 
Merriam's "Adirondack Mammals," E. L. Tru- 
deau's "Autobiography." 

Trudeau's book is a gripping drama of a life- 
struggle, with its Saranac and St. Regis setting 
faithfully portrayed. 

Merriam's "Mammals" is far more than a nat- 



DUFFLE 355 

ural history. It is a loving account of the lives 
of the wild beasts that came under Dr. Merriam's 
observations of forty years. 

The Emerson poem is best commented upon by 
W. J. Stillman in Chapter X of ''The Autobiogra- 
phy of a Journalist." In other chapters Still- 
man tells about the Philosophers ' Club and the ef- 
fect of the woods-life on Emerson, Agassiz, Low- 
ell. In straightforward and illuminating prose 
he gives a fascinating, reflective account of his 
months alone in the forest. One wishes there had 
been volumes instead of chapters. 

Warner's ''Backlog Studies" are always di- 
verting and at times painfully ridiculous. When 
you read them the second time you realize how 
carefully mirrored is the Adirondack scene. His 
character study of Old Mountain Phelps gives 
you the most famous of the Keene Valley guides. 

I have never read any of "Ned Buntline's" 
stories. He lived alone in a shack on Indian 
Point, Raquette Lake and wrote exciting tales. 

The Rev. William Henry Harrison Murray, who 
should have been born in the Adirondacks but 
chose Guilford, Connecticut, instead, is credited 
with stirring up more interest in the Adirondacks 
than any other man. Verplanck Colvin rates high 
with his enthusiastic prophecies and tireless ex- 
plorations. But Adirondack Murray has achieved 
the title ' ' Father of the Adirondacks. ' ' He looked 



356 THE ADIRONDACKS 

much like Mark Twain, and there was a lot 
of energy underneath his white hair. At the close 
of his life he was willing to go out and campaign 
for his beloved mountains when the Park seemed 
in danger. His "Honest John Plumley," the 
hero of the ** Adventures,'* was a splendid old 
guide, and his naive and moving tales will hold 
any boy or man either. See if you can help finish- 
ing ''The Man Who Didn't Know Much." 

If you can find old numbers of S. R. Stoddart's 
''Northern Monthly," you will be able to read in- 
timate accounts of old guides, old habits, and old 
trails. 

But for the Indians there is still no better man 
to turn to with a grain of salt than Cooper and, 
without the salt, Parkman. His pictures of the 
coureurs de hois and of the hois itself are finished. 
He wrote prose that took time to breathe. Would 
you not like to know the rest of this sentence: 
"Rude as he {le coureur de hois) was the voice of 
Nature may not always have been meaningless 
for one who — " 

Many magazine articles have appeared in the 
last three decades, dealing with phases of Adi- 
rondack life, especially in "Outing." A periodi- 
cal index will give them. But even more worth 
while investigating are the Reports of the New 
York Forest Commission. Some of its volumes 
are richly illustrated; in one or another of them 



DUFFLE 357 

every section of the Park is treated, and the reader 
will be surprised at the entertaining style in which 
they are written. The Adirondack region is so 
full of beauty, so rich in historical association that 
it is easy to believe that as a fouhtainhead of 
literature it will be of increasing value to Ameri- 
can writers. 

ADIRONDACK CENTERS 

The Park can be seen superficially with a motor 
in two weeks. A month more would suffice for 
the two great canoe trips and a few climbs. But 
to know the region intimately, to know where you 
will find the trout, where you will see the deer, 
where the berries grow, to recognize the moun- 
tains as you would friends, takes years. On all 
counts the most satisfactory way is to take can- 
vas or cottage at one of the centers and explore 
from it. Without aspiring to the thoroughness 
of a guide-book, the following scheme blocks out 
the chief centers with their neighborhoods. The 
center is in capitals. 

I 

Big Moose Brown's Tract 

OLD FORGE Fulton Chain Raquette Lake Forked Lakes 
Woodhull Lakes 

II 
Brandreth Preserve 
Big Moose 
Brown's Tract RAQUETTE LAKE Forked Lakes Long Lake 
Fulton Chain Waubeek 

Blue Mountain Lake Indian Lake 
Kenwells 



358 THE ADIRONDACKS 

III 

Raquette, Eagle BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE Indian Lake 
Blue Mountain 

IV 

Oedar River Country Kunjamuk Country 

INDIAN LAKE North Creek 

West Canada Lakes Jessup River 

Speculator district 

V 

Indian Lake 
West Canada Lakes 

Jessup River 
SPECULATOR 
Lake Pleasant 
Sacandaga Lake 
Piseco Lake 



Tupper Lakes 
Raquette Forked LONG LAKE 

Blue Moimtain 



VI 

The Saranacs 



Newcomb 
VII 



Massawepie 

The Saranacs 
Cranberry Lake BIG TUPPER LAKE 

Raquette River 
Little Tupper 

VIII 

Osvt'egatchie River Grasse River 

CRANBERRY LAKE 
Star Lake 
Bonaparte The Plains 



DUFFLE 



359 



IX 

Paul Smith's Lake Placid. 

Upper Saranac 
LOWER SARANAC 
The Tuppers Middle Saranac 

Ampersand 

X 

Whiteface 
Paul Smith's Wilmington Notch 

Cobble 
LAKE PLACID 
Upper Saranac Cascade Lakes Keene 

Heart Pond Valley 

Mclntyre-Marcy Range 



Lake Placid 
Indian 



XI 

Meacham Lake 

Paul Smith's 
UPPER ST. REGIS 

Upper Saranac 
XII 

Cascade Lakes 

KEENE VALLEY 



Chateaugay Lakes 
Loon Lake 

Osgood Pond 



Lake Placid 



Ausable Chasm 



Elizabethtown 



Pass 



Newcomb 



Marcy Range 

St. Hubert's 
Ausable Ponds 

Schroon Lake 



Champlain 



360 THE ADIRONDACKS 

XIII 

Keene Valley 
Tahawus 
Newcomb 

SCHROON LAKE 
North Creek Lake George 

Indian Lake 



AN AUTOMOBILE TRIP 

The ''Blue Book" with its consideration for 
tires, turnings, and tea-parties is not to be im- 
proved on. I can only add my humble word that 
Adirondack roads, except after an unusual down- 
pour, are a matter for gratified surprise. Also 
they dry quickly. The usual routes are from 
Utica north, or along the eastern border. The 
road by Schroon Lake is magnificent. But if 
I were showing off the mountains, I would begin at 
Northville, southern boundary of the Park, run 
through the beautifully wooded section to Specu- 
lator, then go north and along the west shore of 
Indian Lake to Blue Mountain Lake, take a day 
off for the boat trip to Eaquette, then motor by 
Long Lake, skirt the big mountains to the south, 
passing through Newcomb, Tahawus, turning 
north to Elizabethtown, from which it is a charm- 
ing hour to Keene Valley, which should be 
ascended to St. Hubert's. Then the route would 
be down the Ausable to the Forks and up through 
the Wilmington Notch to Lake Placid, Saranac, 



DUFFLE 361 

and Paul Smith's. But not even a twin-sixty can 
show you all the Adirondacks. 

A WALKING TRIP 

The walker has still the last laugh. He can 
point to many a place in the Park where neither 
paddle nor gasoline nor horse flesh can go. And 
the secret of a good walking trip is finding just 
such places, for footing it in the dust of vehicles 
somewhat dims the adventure. In an Adirondack 
pack basket you can carry one blanket and a little 
food, which with a compass, a little money, and 
good shoes — but let us not start an argument as to 
the order of going. The destination, I should say, 
is Essex County. West of the railroad it is diffi- 
cult and monotonous for pleasure-walking. The 
Cedar River country is too wild for going light. 
The Schroon Lake region is too mild. The Ea- 
quette and Saranac sections are better for a canoe. 
For a specimen good time how is this? 

First day. Leave train at Westport. Walk to Keene 

Valley, 24 miles, easy road. 
Second day. Climb Giant for view of southeast of Park. 
Third day. Loaf and enjoy the Ausable Ponds. Sleep 

on Upper. 
Fourth day. Climb Marcy, descending by Colden to the 

Iron Works. 
Fifth day. Exploration of the Gorge of the Opalescent. 

Sixth day. Leisurely trip over Indian Pass to Heart Pond. 

Seventh Day. Hallow it. (Cf. Wordsworth or Thanatopsis.) 
Eighth day. Climb Mclntyre for the 135 lakes. 



362 THE ADIRONDACKS 

Nintli day. John Brown's farm, Lake Placid, and a hot 

bath, 8 miles. 
Tenth day. Climb Whiteface for view of Montreal and 

points north. 

TWO HUNDRED-MILE CANOE TEIPS 

The Adirondack Park probably furnishes the 
most satisfactory canoe touring in our country. 
The following chart shows only some of the possi- 
bilities. I have written draw for carries made 
with a horse : 

FULTON CHAIN 

First Lake iy2 miles 

Second Lake 1 mile 

Third Lake 1 mile 

Inlet 40 rods 

Fourth Lake 6 miles 

Fifth Lake 1/4 mile 

Carry % mile 

Sixth Lake % mile 

Inlet 1 mile 

Seventh Lake 2 miles 

Inlet ll^ miles 

Draw 1 mile 

Eighth Lake 1% miles 

Draw 11/4 miles 

Brown's Tract Inlet 4 miles 

RAQUETTE LAKE 

TO Mouth of Marion River 3^/^ miles 

Marion River to Carry 4 miles 

R. R. Carry 1/2 mile 

Utowana Lake 2 miles 

Inlet 1/2 mile 

Eagle Lake 1 mile 



DUFFLE 363 

BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE 

OR TO Forked Lake Carry 9 miles 

Carry l^ mile 

Forked Lake 3 miles 

Draw iy2 miles 

River short distance 

Carry about Buttermilk Falls a few rods 

River 4 miles 

Carry % mile 

River and soon 

LONG LAKE 14 miles 

Raquette River 6 miles 

Draw 1^/2 miles 

River 6 miles 

Draw to Upper Saranae 2 miles 

Saranae Inn 9 miles 

Draw to Big Clear Pond 3 miles 

Big Clear Pond 2 miles 

St. Germain Draw IV2 miles 

Upper St. Regis 1 mile 

Spitfire 1 mile 

Inlet Lower St. Regis (Paul Smith's) . 1 mile 

Draw to Osgood Pond 1 mile 

Osgood Pond 2l^ miles 

Inlet 1 mile 

Lueretia Lake V/2 miles 

Short Carry Rainbow Lake 3 miles 

Lily Pad Pond ^ 

Lake Kushaqua 15 miles 

Mud Pond \ 

Carry 1 mile 



364 THE ADIRONDACKS 

LOON LAKE about 102 miles from Blue Mt. and 
about 115 from Old Forge. 

OR 

Instead of going from Upper Saranae to Paul Smith's one 
can go to 

Outlet (from Indian Carry) 2 miles 

Carry aromid dam 

River i/^ mile 

Middle Saranae 3 miles 

Stream (with carry) 3 miles 

Lower Saranae to village 6 miles 

OR 

Instead of deviating into the Saranacs on the way from Long 
Lake, keep on 

Raquette River to Big Tupper 21 miles 

Bog River 1 mile 

(or the Bog may be ascended into its marshy lakes) 

Draw to Round Pond 2 miles 

Round Pond 2 miles 

Inlet 1 mile 

Little Tupper 6 miles 

(From here five little carries with ponds intervening will bring 
you out on Little Forked and so to Raquette.) 

Doubtful stream to Charley Pond. .... 3 miles 
Charley's Pond % mile 

Inlet. 

(Deer Pond, Little Rock, West, Shingle Shanty Ponds make 
too big a tangle, so) 

Carry to Lake Lila 2 miles 

Lake Lila 3 miles 

Outlet to Lake Nehasane 3 miles 

Lake Nehasane 4 miles 



DUFFLE 365 

Carry down outlet % mile 

Beaver River to Stillwater 25 miles 

This route totals about 105 miles from Saranac Village. 
SOME CLIMBS 

One of the prime methods of self-deception is 
to decide on a climb because of its measurements. 
Beauty never was expressed in feet above sea 
level, and reward in the matter of view suspends 
all moral laws by declining to bear any relation 
to the labor involved. Twenty minutes up little 
Cobble does more for you than a two-hours ' sweat 
up Dug Mountain. Still, a few representative 
heights are interesting: 

Marey (5344 feet) gives a survey of the entire Adirondacks, 

but makes most of the mountains look like a cluster of 

haycocks. 
Whiteface (4871) is isolated, shows Ontario, the St. Lawrence 

and a magnificent circle of horizon. 
Mclntyre (5112) shows the maximum number of lakes. 
The Gothics (4744) is the heart of the great range. 
West Mountain (2919) gives a near view of the lake country. 
Snowy (3903) gives an impressive expanse of forest cover. 
Speculator (3041) shows the southern districts. 
Gore (3539) shows the valley of the Hudson. 
Blue (3762) is for a central viewpoint. 
Ampersand (3432) gives what Dr. Henry Van Dyke considers 

the finest view of all. 

Haystack (4918) Noon Mark (3550) Giant (4530) 
Dix (4916) Cobble (1936) Hurricane (3763 

Colden (4753) Seward (4384) Santanoni (4644) 



366 THE ADIRONDACKS 

THE BOTTOM OF THE BAG 

When is a duffle bag ever absolutely full — or 
empty? There were lots of things that Lynn and 
I missed — multitudes of lakes, some of the rivers, 
several of the fish. We didn't know enough to 
look for the Military Eoad that was built for the 
War of 1812, or to visit the great falls of the 
Ausable, or to look for Indian arrow-heads and 
graves on the shores of Raquette, or to see the 
huge moraine between Blue Mountain and Cedar 
river. We didn't realize that there are a dozen 
kinds of conifers to look for, or that most of the 
flat meadows were due to beaver, Indian Clearing 
containing one thousand acres underlaid with 
peat, or that evergreen air is not only aseptic, but 
antiseptic. For those we shall go again. 

But there is one thing we did not miss. It goes 
with the duffle that has seen much strain and 
wear — the sense of fellowship for those bent on 
the same errand of enjoying the woods. And 
when one day we found in Adirondack Murray a 
frank expression of that very thing, Lynn said, 
''That 's a smooth thing to beach your book on." 
So here it is: 

''For if you hut love the out-door life as I do 
love it you are friends to me, even kith and kin, by 
a relationship finer and closer than that of blood — 
likeness of nature/' 



INDEX 



Acknowledgments, 352 
Adirondack, 273 
Adirondack altitudes, 365 

ascents, 291 

centers, 357 

Forest Preserve, 16 

geology, 15 

hermits, 341 

Lodge, 262 

Mt. Reserve, 293 

mountain shapes, 241 

Park resources, 349 

Park rules, 348 

Park dimensions, 23 

passes, 290 

Plateau, 147 

seasons, 319 

trips, 360 
"Adirondack" Murray, 15, 355, 

366 
"The Adirondaes," 224 
Agassiz, 224 
Ampersand, 223, 230 
Association for Preservation of 

the Adirondacks, 97 
Ausable chasm, 298 

ponds, 292 

River, 294 
Avalanche Lake, 277 
Axton, 129 

Balsam, the, 86 
Bear, the, 180 
Beaver, the, 188 



Beavertown, 221 
Beech, the, 91 
Bibliography, 353 
Big Tupper Lake, 137 
Big Simon's Pond, 134 
Birches, the, 87 
Black fly, the, 330 
Black River, 221 
Blue Mt. Lake, 108 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 222 
Botheration Flow, 37 
Brandreth Brook, 114 
Brandy Brook, 169 
Brown, John, 259 
Brown's Tract, 337 
Brown's Tract Inlet, 119 
Butter Brook, 73 
Buttermilk Falls, 124 

Calamity Pond, 277 
Canada Creek, 50 
Canoe trips, 362 
Cascade Lakes, 283 
Cedar River, 66 
Cbamplain, Sieur de, 9 
Chateaugay Lakes, 229 
Chazy Lake, 229 
Childwold, 157 
Chimney Mt., 40 
Climbs, 365 

Colvin, Verplanck, 14, 97 
Conifer, 170 
Corinth, 13 
Crags, the, 104 



367 



368 



INDEX 



Cranberry Lake, 157 
Crotched Pond, 60 
Curling, 312 

Diana, 222 
Deer, the, 182 
Dewey, Melvil, 240 
Dix Mt., 291 
Dug Mt., 47, 56 



Indian Face, 294 
Indian Lake, 48, 58 
Indian Pass, 268 
Inhabitants, Dutch, 11 

French, 12, 221 

Indian, 7, 341 

Irish, 12 

Scotch, 12 
Iroquois Ravine, 268 



Eagle Lake, 108 
Elk, the, 180 
Emerson, 224 

First settlements, 10 

First summer boarders, 13 

Forestport, 13 

Forked Lake, 124, 142 

Fox, the, 197 

Fulton Chain, 117, 362 

Garnet mine, 34 
Giant-of-the-Valley, 289 
Glacial period, 6 
Gore Mt., 37 
Gothics, the, 287 
Grasse River, 169 
Guides, 14, 37, 168 

Hanging Spear Falls, 278 
Heart Pond, 261 
Hemlock, the, 85 
HerreshofiF, 337 
Hinckley, 13 
Hough, 15 
Hour Pond, 34 
Hudson River, 28, 33 
Hunters' Pass, 290 
Hurricane Mt., 284 

Ice-boating, 311 



Jessup River, 58 
John Mack Pond, 60 

Keene Valley, 284 flf. 
Kenwells, 163 
King's Flow, 39 
Kunjamuk, 37, 39, 43, 59 

La Compagnie de New York, 221 

Lake Bonaparte, 222 

Lake Golden, 278 

Lake Henderson, 272 

Lake Lila, 149 

Lake Massawepie, 172 

Lake Placid, 238 

Lake Placid Club, 240 

Lake Pleasant, 49 

Lewey Lake, 59 

Little Moose Lake, 69 

Long Lake, 127 

Loon Lake, 229 

Lost, 67 

Lowell, 224 

Lucretia Lake, 227 

Luggins, explained, 29, 159 

admired, 58 

reproached, 231 
Lynx, the, 179 

Macomb's Purchase, 337 
Maple, the, 88 



INDEX 



369 



Maple sugar, 88 
Marion River, 107 
Mason Lake, 58 
Miami River, 58 
Mice, the, 201 
Miller, Mr. Wm. J., 40 
Mink, the, 203 
Modes of travel, 29 
Moose, tlie, 179 
Mosquito, the, 331 
Mount Colden, 278 
Mount Mclntyre, 279 
Mount Marcy, 59, 280 
Mount Morris, 134 
Mount Jo, 267 
Mount Seward, 281 
Murray, Adirondack, 15, 355, 
366 

Nameless Creek, 119 
Nat Foster, 338 
Natural Bridge, 223 
Nehasane Park, 149 
Niggerhead Mt., 104 
Noon Mark, 288 
North Creek, 27, 301 
North River, 28 

Old Forge, 118 
Opalescent River, 277 
Osgood Pond, 227 
Osvjregatchie River, 163 
Otter, the, 203 
Otter Brook, 75 

Panorama Bluff, 294 
Panther, the, 178 
Panther Gorge, 294 
Peaked Mt., 33 
Pezeeko, 341 
Pharaoh Mt., 300 



Phelps, Old Mountain, 240, 287 

Philosopher's Club, 224 

Pine, the, 84 

Piseco Lake, 50 

Pitchoflf Mt., 283 

Poke o' Moonshine, 299 

Porcupine, the, 191 

Primeval forest, 80 

Preston Ponds, 277 

Punky, the, 331 

Raccoon, the, 200 
Rainbow Falls, 294, 298 
Rainbow Lake, 228 
Raquette Lake, 103 
Raquette River, 123 
Remsen, 18 

Roaring Brook Falls, 294 
Round Trip, the, 227 

St. Hubert's, 288 
Sabattis, 341 
Sabele, 288, 341 
Sacandaga Lake, 50 
Sangermo, 341 
Saranac Lake, Upper, 129 
Saranac Lake Village, 230 
Sawteeth, 288 
Schenectady, 10 
Schroon Lake, 299 
Shallow Pond, 119 
Silver Brook, 73 
Ski-ing, 310 
Ski-joring, 311 
Sledding, 308 
Sleighing, 313 
Smith, Paul, 210 
Snow-cave, 42 
Snow-shoeing, 314 
Snowy Mt., 60 
Speculator, 48 



370 



INDEX 



Spruce, the, 86 
Squaw Brook, 65 
Star Lake, 164 
Stevenson, 219 
Stillman, 224 
Sweeney's Carry, 



133 



Tahawus, 59, 280 
Tahawus Club, 273 
Tear of the Clouds, 277 
Thirteenth Lake, 29 
Tobogganing, 309 
Totten and Crossfield's 

chase, 338 
Trudeau, Dr. E. L., 214 

Utica, 10 



Pur- 



Utowana Lake, 108 



Walking trip, 361 
Wall Face, 270 
Wanakena, 162 
Weasel, the, 203 
Weather statistics, 327 
West Mt., 113 
Whiteface Mt., 281, 323 
Whitney Preserve, 140 
Whittaker Lake, 48, 52, 
Wild-cat, the, 179 
Wilmington Notch, 234 
Winter camping, 314 
Wolf, the, 177 
Wood-chuck, the, 198 



56 



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